
Class _ 
Book._ 







Copyiight N?._ 



C£EtRIGHT DEPOSffi 



The Art and Practice 
of Journalism 



HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL 
WRITER 



BY 

EDWIN L. SHUMAN 



Chicago: 
STEVANS & HANDY 






38237 



Copyright, 1899, 
By Stevans & Handy 



WO COPIES N£CulV£0, 






5**WO 






CONTENTS. 
Evolution of the Press 1 

Introduction — Value of advice — Journalism both 
an art and a science — Colleges of journalism — No lack 
of subjects — Newspaper office the wrong place to go 
for fame — Reporting a useful apprenticeship — News- 
paper meaning of term " story "—Power of the press — 
21,000 newspapers in the United States — Improvements 
in printing-presses — Advent and growth of the tele- 
graph — Mercenary phase of journalism — Stereotyping 
process — Typesetting machines — Condensation — Or- 
ganization of the staff — No place for reformers. 

Plan of a Newspaper Article 22 

How to begin a newspaper article — Construction 
of headlines — Mistakes of correspondents — Value of 
time — Preparation of copy — Pencil allowable — Type- 
written copy the best— Illegibility to be avoided —How 
to mail copy— Treatment of abbreviations — Paragraph- 
ing — Division of words — Italics and quotation marks — 
"Style." 

A Day with a Reporter 42 

Responsibilities of the city editor — The "scoop " — 
How "tips" are obtained — Assignments — Character- 
ization of the reporter — Moral dangers of reporting — 
"Faking" poor policy — Covering assignments — In the 
local room — Reporting a casualty — Composing the 
story — Reporting a breach of promise case — Doing a 
saloon brawl, a strawberry festival and a fire all in one 



iv CONTENTS. 

evening- — What the life teaches — Editorializing- to be 
avoided in news columns. 

Interviewing and News -Gathering 68 

Methods of getting interviews — Value of memory — 
Methods of news-gathering — How to write an inter- 
view — Use of the notebook— Association of ideas— Value 
of acquaintance — Shorthand not necessary— Typewriter 
almost indispensable — Almost all newspaper writing 
anonymous. 

Getting a Start as Correspondent 86 

Best way to begin is as local news correspondent — 
Newspaper work easier than magazine writing — Aver- 
age salaries on newspapers are low — Need of college 
education — Papers have no use for essays — How to 
send news — Sending a story by telegraph— Queries or 
bulletins — How to begin a dispatch — Don't skeleton- 
ize — What constitutes news — Space writing — The re- 
porter's string. 

Methods of the Editorial Room 106 

Editorial work both corrective and productive — 
Functions of the copy reader— Telegraph editor — Ex- 
change reader — Department editors — Editorial writers 
— Functions of editor-in-chief and managing editor — 
The night editor— Book reviews— Training for a liter- 
ary editor— Tricks of the profession — Popular ignor- 
ance of the ways of a newspaper office. 

Writing a Special 124 

Three types of newspaper specials — Timeliness a 
necessary element— Space rates paid in different cities 
— Work that can be done at home — How to go at it — 
Where to find available subjects— Headlines unneces- 
sary—Pen names out of date— Noted special writers- 
Occasional correspondence — Personal letters to the 
editor— Material most in demand— Anecdotes "good 



CONTENTS. v 

stuff" — Tastes of readers must be consulted — Why 
articles are rejected — Short articles preferred — No 
need to call upon the editor. 

Women in Newspaper Work 145 

Woman's right to do what she can do as well as 
men — Departments of journalism for which women 
are not fitted— Society reporting and woman's depart- 
ment the feminine journalist's best hold — Women who> 
are reporters — How to begin — Women who are noted 
special writers— Spectacular methods of gaining fame 
— Useless articles contributed by women — Sacrifices 
that do not pay — Women as correspondents — A woman 
reporter's views — Qualifications necessary — Stead's 
views — Women can be journalists if they will devote 
their lives to the work as men do. 

Errors of all Sorts 168 

Occasional mistakes inevitable — A talk with an 
editor on the subject — It pays to learn to spell — Writers 
must punctuate their own copy — Value of a knowledge 
of grammar — How to use quotation marks — Watch 
your pronouns — Learn the right use of shall and will — 
Don't split the active infinitive — Metaphors harmless 
as long as you do not mix them — Value of condensa- 
tion — Misstatements not usually the fault of the re- 
porter — An example of faking — Study of words a life 
work — Errors of the proof-reader — How to become 
a proof-reader — Chicago Tribune' s instructions to re- 
porters — Don'ts for newspaper men. 

Magazine and Novel Writing 192 

Difference between magazine and newspaper — 
Illustrations — Fiction sometimes pays well — Rage 
for short stories — A story should be located in a 
particular spot — Character delineation the chief end 
of the novelist —How to construct a plot — Newspaper 



vi CONTENTS. 

training not the best — Use of words of color — Dialect 
stories out of style— Four hours a long day's work — 
Fiction writing an art — Good style can be acquired — 
James Lane Allen's views — Robert Louis Stevenson 
believes in elbow grease — Walter Besant's rules — Real- 
ism and idealism— Keep your story moving— Human 
interest the greatest interest — Methods of composi- 
tion — Editorial "we" out of date — Where to find 
materials — Novel of today— Qualifications for a novel- 
ist. 

Mission of the Press ■ 218 

Idealist's view of the press — Power of the steam 
press — Its evils indicted — When all is said, the good 
preponderates— Spread of knowledge — Earth's wicked- 
ness not to be covered up but to be shown in its true 
light — Work that awaits the press — Power of the 
humblest sheet on the side of right — Lovejoy's work — 
Responsibility of the editors of the land. 



PREFACE. 



Charles Dudley Warner once remarked 
that he had found plenty of people who were 
not able to subscribe for a newspaper, but 
never had he seen the person who was not 
perfectly able — in his own estimation — to edit 
one. It can therefore do no harm to print 
secrets which lavish heaven has already im- 
planted in every living soul. 

It is not the aim of this book to make any 
more writers: we have too many now. On 
none of these pages will there be found a sin- 
gle word tempting any young man to leave 
the farm or the business office, or advising 
any young woman to forsake the household 
routine, in order to run after the ignis f atuus 
of literary fame. Where there are words of 
encouragement or enthusiasm they are for 
those only who have the divine call — which, 



viii STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

in preacher and editor alike, is nothing but 
the native ability to do that one thing better 
than any other thing in the world. 

This book is the outgrowth of a course of 
instruction in journalism conducted by the 
author in the Chautauquan assembly at Bay 
View, Michigan, where the demand for some- 
thing of the kind was seen to be widespread 
and earnest. These pages, though in part 
addressed to beginners, are for those who 
would be writers in any case, by the force of 
predilection, whether the world vouchsafed 
them applause or a flout. In part they are 
meant for country editors and city reporters 
who have not had time or opportunity to 
study the best journals of the country or to 
analyze modern journalistic methods. And 
in part they are written for the thousands of 
young men and women who are trying hero- 
ically at home to write for newspapers and 
magazines and who cannot understand why 
their manuscripts are rejected with such 
painful regularity. If a man is bound to be 
a writer he may as well have every possible 
chance to be a good writer, if so cheap a 
thing as advice can avail anything to that end. 



:,-. ' PREFACE. ix 

The instruction in these pages is merely a 
condensation of the: experience common to all 
editors who work up, as did the author on 
certain Chicago papers, from the onerous re- 
sponsibilities of printer's devil to those, suc- 
cessively, of compositor, proof-reader, re- 
porter, copy reader, telegraph editor, ex- 
change reader and editorial writer. But 
most editors, after having come through this 
ordeal, are either too busy to analyze and sys- 
tematize the knowledge that has been 
pounded into them by grim experience, or too 
weary to give any advice save in emphatic 
and sweeping negatives. Hence things that 
to them are commonplace, to the outside 
world are secrets — near of kin to the 
newspaper man's conventional ' ' open secret, " 
which an unkind critic has denned as being 
something that no one knows. Through this 
professional reticence the author takes the 
liberty of breaking. And, though these pages 
were written entirely in moments stolen from 
sleep or recreation, the writer has tried to 
keep as far from unjust pessimism as from the 
still more vicious extreme of sentimental op- 
timism. 



x STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Charles Dudley Warner's bit of sarcasm, 
as usual with an epigram or a pearl, has a 
solid grain at the heart. Most newspaper 
readers do not realize that journalism has 
grown to be a profession requiring every 
whit as hard study and preparation as medi- 
cine or the law — that it is no easier to become 
a great editor than to attain distinction as a 
famous professor. Looked at in the light of 
this fact, the little that can be learned from 
the reading of a single book on the subject 
seems infinitesimal. And so it is, in a sense; 
yet for those who will patiently embody in 
actual practice the principles and suggestions 
here set down, the first and most important 
lessons will already have been learned. 

E. L. S. 
Evanston, III., January 1, 1894. 



STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 



yiEW OF THE FIELD. 

In returning from a trip to Alaska a few 
years ago I had the good fortune to be on 
the same steamer with an old prospector who 
had seen much more of the interior of that 
wonderful country than I had. He had j ust 
come down the whole length of the Yukon 
river, and I naturally looked upon him with 
no little awe and admiration. 

As we paced the decks of the steamer St. 
Paul, pitching and rolling in the stormy 
North Pacific between Unalaska and San 
Francisco, I often tried to draw him out and 
get him to describe the wonders he had seen. 
My success was something like this: 

' 'You went down the whole course of the 
Yukon, from the headwaters clear to Bering 
Sea?" 

-Yes." 

"How did the river impress you?" 

"Oh, it's a gigantical river." 



2 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

"And that vast wilderness of rocks and 
tundra — what do you think of it?" 

"Now, lemme tell you the honest fact: 
that's a gigantical country." 

"Urn — yes; but tell me about some of the 
resources of that region." 

"Well, young feller, I'll tell you; they're 
gigantical — simply gigantical. " 

When I went down the gang plank at the 
San Francisco dock I knew exactly as much 
about the Yukon valley as when I first met 
my gigantical friend under the frowning 
Aleutian cliffs fifteen days before. 

Today the young men and women that are 
just reaching out for the pen are asking 
eagerly about the highways and byways of 
the great undiscovered country of journal- 
ism. I have been traveling in that region of 
the literary world for the last dozen years, 
and have come to the conclusion that it is a 
"gigantical" country. But, though the whole 
matter is doubtless summed up in that one 
mysterious word, I will try, for the sake of 
these eager inquirers, to go a little more into 
details than did my Yukon friend. 

The journalism of today is both an art and 
a science. In so far as it is a science it can be 
taught by instruction and advice; in so far as 
it is an art the beginner can acquire skill in 
it only by actual practice. The student who 



VIEW OF THE FIELD. 3 

is so fortunate as to be able to secure a com- 
bination of instruction and practice is the one 
who, other things being equal, will make the 
most rapid progress. 

Advice never yet made a writer, and never 
will. Experience is the only university that 
can confer the degree of Master of the Pen. 
Advice to a young writer can never take the 
place of work on his part, but it may save 
him a great deal of useless work. Is it not 
passing strange, by the way, that there is no 
institution, no instructor, to whom the would- 
be fiction writer can go to learn his art ? In 
music we have conservatories and music 
teachers; and the young artist who wishes to 
create a picture or a statue can go to a studio 
and learn under a master. But when a man 
wants to create a piece of art in literature — 
say, a great novel — he has no teacher to 
whom he can go for that special knowledge 
not included in the ordinary literary courses 
of our colleges. He must stumble along 
alone and learn only by repeated trial and 
failure. It is almost as bad in newspaper 
work. There is no good reason why there 
should not be professional schools for editors 
and reporters as well as for physicians or 
typewriters. 

True, a few colleges have already recog- 
nized the profession of journalism in their 
curricula, but as yet in only a half-hearted 



4 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

way. The time is coming when all our chief 
colleges will have chairs endowed for the 
instruction not only of young men and women 
who are looking toward journalism, but of 
literary aspirants of all kinds, to teach con- 
structive work — how to shape and color and 
breathe life into a great story or treatise. 

In the meantime, the beginner will have 
to learn in the good old way — by hard experi- 
ence. All that a writer on the subject can do 
is to designate the direction in which the 
most profitable brand of experience is to be 
found. The hand on a signboard may point 
out the right fork of the road and save the 
traveler from getting lost in the forest, though 
it can never pick him up and carry him to his 
journey's end. The highest aspiration of the 
present treatise is to be such a matter-of-fact 
signpost for the benefit of those rash folks 
who have their heads set on exploring the 
wilderness of newspaperdom. 

Said a self-important young man to a 
crusty old gentleman one day, "I have made 
up my mind to become a journalist, sir; what 
kind of paper would you advise me to work 
with ?" 

"With a piece of sandpaper," growled the 
old man, without looking up from his cash 
book. 

Perhaps the old gentleman was right; and 
perhaps he was not. At any rate, if the 



VIEW OF THE FIELD. 5 

young fellow had two grains of sand in him 
he went off and became a brilliant reporter, 
out of pure pique. Discouragement is not 
the kind of advice that is needed; or, if it is 
needed, it is not the kind that will be taken. 
The plain, unbiased truth about newspaper 
work is what I should want as a beginner, and 
that is what the readers of this book shall 
have. If that is not sufficient to frighten you 
away into some field of endeavor where the 
work is less and the pay greater, then yours 
is one of those hopeless cases which nothing 
but experience can cure, and perhaps not 
even that. 

Many people who think they are cut out 
to be writers are mistaken; but nothing will 
demonstrate that fact to themselves or to 
anyone else except the stern mathematics 
of experience. The young woman who re- 
marked that she could write well enough, if 
somebody would only give her a subject, 
probably spoiled a first-class dish-washer 
when she tried to be literary. Anybody who 
lacks for subjects in a world like this was 
never intended for a writer. Wrongs to 
right, great lives and deeds to chronicle, new 
triumphs of science to describe, the seething 
battlefield of human life to paint — how vast 
and how alluring is the work that stretches 
on and on before the enthusiastic writer! The 



6 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

one grim, question that dogs his footsteps 
night and day is, What not to write about. 

Newspaper reporting is probably the best 
apprenticeship that will ever be found for 
teaching readiness with the pen. But it is .as 
well to realize at the outset that the career of 
the reporter is neither a flowery bed of ease 
nor a glory-lighted pathway to fame. The 
young man or woman who longs for either 
ease or widespread reputation will leave hope 
behind at the threshold of the reporters' 
room, 

"For it's wur'rk and groind all day, 
Without any sugar in yer tay." 

The salaries of newspaper workers average 
less than those received by men who put the 
same amount of talent and energy into busi- 
ness pursuits. The hours are longer than 
those of the school teacher, and the work is 
equally wearing without bringing any holi- 
days or long vacations. And as for personal 
reputation, not one American newspaper 
writer in a thousand ever comes to be known 
by name to his readers. The reporter must 
sink his personality out of sight and merge 
his very identity in that of his paper. So 
long as he is a reporter it is an unpardonable 
sin for him to express in his "copy" his own 
ideas on debatable questions. Every news- 
paper has a policy, determined by the editor- 
in-chief, and it is the reporter's duty to hew 



VIEW OF THE FIELD. 7 

to the line that has been stretched for him. 
Nobody cares what his private opinions may 
be upon matters political or things critical. 
His business is to report facts aud other peo- 
ple's opinions. 

This work of local chronicler is excellent 
training for certain other kinds of writing— 
not for all kinds, as we shall see later — and 
the work has its charm for any eager mind. 
Moreover, it would do no harm, but on the 
contrary would, do much good, if all would-be 
writers, without exception, understood the 
plan on which a newspaper story is built. A 
"story," by the way, in newspaper parlance, 
is not simply a bit of romance, but anything 
written in narrative form, from the account 
of a royal wedding to a description of the 
state of the hog market. 

Before the young aspirant apprentices 
himself to the press it behooves him to know 
what manner of taskmaster this is, that he 
must serve. It is not always kind; neither is 
it always unqualifiedly good; but of its great- 
ness there can be no question. Newspapers 
are even crowding out the books, and, to a 
degree, the magazines. There are many 
wealthy men with great libraries in their 
houses who read scarcely anything but the 
daily journals from one year's end to another. 

True, another saying of the times might 
be aptly quoted here, to the effect that peo- 



8 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

pie no longer read; they only look. Never- 
theless, the newspaper has become the king 
of the realm of letters. A rather harum- 
scarum and ill-spoken limb of royalty it must 
be confessed he is, in some of his aspects. 
But it always pays to be on speaking terms 
with the king, especially if you are going to 
make your bread and butter in his realm. 
And, after all, the ruler is no worse than his 
subjects; the newspaper is just what its read- 
ers make it. Editors must fill their columns 
with something that will fill the publisher's 
coffers, and the public, by their patronage, 
determine what this shall be. 

Journalism, with all its frothy gossip and 
all its demoralizing details of crime, is also 
commanding the best literature of the world. 
Cabinet officers, senators, scientists, scholars, 
in every civilized nation of the globe, are con- 
tributors to American newspapers — espe- 
cially to the Sunday paper. There is scarcely 
a man wielding the pen today whose services 
the newspaper cannot command. 

As for the influence of the press, its power 
as a molder of public opinion may, I think, 
be overestimated and is overestimated by 
many people. The time has come when the 
American people, at least, are doing a vast 
deal of thinking for themselves. The editor- 
ial columns of the daily papers no longer 
have the power that they used to wield. The 



VIEW OF THE FIELD. 9 

day of servile party organs is past. But as 
an educator the press can never be overrated. 
It is a greater educator than the forum, the 
church or even the public school. The aver- 
age child goes to school only three years of 
its life. Not one quarter, even of the edu- 
cated people of America, attend church, but 
since the advent of penny papers nine-tenths 
of those who can read take their newspapers. 
The vast majority have no other means 
of education. It is almost appalling, when 
we stop to think of it, that the voters, the 
men who are the sovereigns of our land and 
who make and unmake our presidents and our 
legislators, get their schooling almost wholly 
through the newspapers. 



EVOLUTION OF THE PRESS. 

It needs but a glimpse of the details to 
give one a realizing sense of the proportions 
and nature of this mighty genie which Guten- 
berg conjured up 450 years ago and which 
has been growing and spreading out its myr- 
iad arms ever since, until now it fills the 
whole earth. 

The newspaper was not such a great insti- 
tution fifty years ago. In the early part of 
this century it could not compare with the 
pulpit for power. The rostrum in those days 
was the Colossus of Rhodes and the press was 
a little trading galley that passed and re- 
passed beneath it. Today the press is a 
Great Eastern that can take the said Colossus 
as a steerage passenger and give all the rest 
of the world a first-class cabin berth beside. 

There are now 21,000 newspapers and 
magazines in this country where eighty years 
ago there were only 200. The aggregate cir- 
culation of the newspapers in the United 
States is estimated to be nearly 2,000,000,000 
annually, or about forty copies for each man, 
woman and child. Fifty years ago all the 



E VOL UTION OF THE PRESS. 1 1 

New York dailies put together did not issue 
more than 10,000 copies a day; now there are 
at least half a dozen that have each a daily 
issue of over 100,000, and several with more 
than double that circulation. 

This marvelous growth of the newspaper 
industry is a thing of comparatively recent 
years. It was the war of the rebellion that 
made the American newspaper great. The 
breathless interest to know whether the blue 
or the gray was victorious and whether any 
dear, familiar names were on the list of 
killed or wounded in the last battle made a 
reading nation of us. 

Even now there are some old men left who 
can tell you how they used to print their pa- 
pers on a Washington hand press, one page 
at a time; how the flat type-form was labori- 
ously inked each time by hand; how the damp- 
ened sheet of paper was carefully laid upon 
the type, and then how, with a back-breaking 
pull on the lever, they took the impression; 
and how, finally, with the perspiration trick- 
ling down their editorial brows, they pulled 
out the printed sheet — cautiously, so as not 
to tear it — rolled their shirt sleeves a little 
higher, and went to work on the next copy. 
Those were the days when the circulation 
of a paper depended upon the number of pulls 
that one pair of arms could give to a lever 
during the hour or two that span the life of a 



12 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

news item; 500 was a large circulation, 1,000 
enormous, and beyond 1 500 an impossibility. 
If some prophet had told those muscular edit- 
ors that before the end of the century there 
would be a New York paper issuing 400,000 
copies daily, he would either have been 
thrashed or locked up as a dangerous lunatic. 

The newspaper has been completely revo- 
lutionized at least four times in the last half 
century. The agencies that did it were, first, 
the cylinder press; next, the railroads and 
telegraph; then, the multiple press; and, 
finally, the stereotyping process and its com- 
panion, the wonderful perfecting press now 
in use. And even now we are about to wit- 
ness still another revolution at the hands of 
that innovator so much dreaded by the print- 
ers — the type-setting machine. 

The first revolution was caused, very ap- 
propriately, by the revolving cylinder press. 
This is the press still in use, in a greatly im- 
proved form, for the printing of books. In 
this the type stands in a flat bed which is car- 
ried back and forth beneath a great, heavy 
cylinder; the paper is fed in at the top, 
passes between the cylinder and the type, and 
comes out printed on one side. Beside such 
a press, especially with steam power hitched 
to it, the hand press was nowhere. 

But the influence of the daily journal still 
could not be very sweeping so long as the 



E VOL UTION OF THE PRESS. 13 

mails were carried on horseback. Then came 
the railroads; they tripled, quadrupled, mul- 
tiplied a thousand fold the area of circulation. 

Again the craft was utterly revolutionized 
by the invention of the fast printing press. 
It is not too much to say that one man — Rich- 
ard M. Hoe— gave a new birth to journalism. 
When he showed how types could be put upon 
a revolving cylinder he did as much for liter- 
ature as the inventor of gunpowder did for 
war. With the Hoe press of 1846 came the 
possibility of addressing millions, at the mo- 
ment of their keenest interest, within a single 
hour, upon the events of that hour. And al- 
most simultaneously with the railroads had 
come Morse with his telegraph a few years 
before, so that now the news might be flashed 
from every State in the Union and retold ten 
thousand times by this "lightning press." It 
was an era in the history of the world. 

And at this stage came another change as 
startling as any in its way. The publication 
of newspapers ceased to be the work of jour- 
neyman printers, propagandists, needy politi- 
cians, self-sacrificing reformers, starving 
adventurers. From this point on, ideas were 
to be spread not so much for the sake of the 
ideas as for the sake of tne money that was 
in them. Henceforth the newspaper was to 
be a great business enterprise, demanding 
large capital, the most skillful management, 



14 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

and — because, it paid — the best work of the 
brainiest writers. 

Under this enormous stimulus and devel- 
opment the newspaper again outgrew its fa- 
cilities; no printing press ever devised could 
print enough 'papers to supply the millions of 
eager readers who called for them. 

Then came the latest change, amounting 
in extent to a revolution: the stereotyping 
process, by which, in a few minutes, the types 
for the whole paper are duplicated again and 
again, so that the same edition may be set 
running on a dozen or two dozen presses at 
the same moment. Hand in hand with this 
discovery has come the perfecting press — a 
marvelous piece of mechanism that devours 
the blank paper in a continuous ribbon, prints 
both sides, folds, cuts, and pastes the whole 
sixteen-page paper automatically, and counts 
out the completed copies at the incredible 
speed of 30,000 an hour. 

To feed such an insatiable monster the 
typesetting machine is bound to come. In 
fact, it is already here. Many of the large 
dailies are using machines by which one man 
can do the work of eight or ten — intricate 
mechanisms representing the life work of 
more than one indefatigable inventor and 
performing acts so marvelously like those of 
the human hand that they seem to be living, 
breathing things. In a few years the type 



EVOLUTION OF THE PRESS. 15 

case and the hand compositor will be things 
of the past, like the lever press and the stage 
coach. 

The present enormous extension of the tele- 
graph lines and ocean cables, which we have 
come to look upon as a matter of course, has 
taken place within the lifetime of those of us 
who may still be called young. Even during 
the crowning excitement that preceded the 
civil war the New York Tribune was accus- 
tomed to receive but two columns of tele- 
graphic news each day. News from Europe 
came by steamer. News from other cities 
came by letter when it came at all. Clippings 
from exchanges were the chief source of the 
editor's supply- -a source to which he never 
thinks of looking now for news. 

Today your foreign news comes exclusive- 
ly by cable; your domestic news comes alto- 
gether by telegraph; a news letter — why, 
bless your heart, the younger generation 
hardly knows what you mean by a news let- 
ter; it has vanished almost utterly, for the 
simple reason that the news has been told 
before a letter could start. Even the account 
of a battle fought in Siam yesterday is read 
this morning at the Chicago breakfast table. 
The newspaper writer at one leap has taken 
the whole world for his province. Instead of 
the scant two columns of telegraphic news in 
1859 we now have page after page put into 



16 STh PS INTO JOURNALISM. 

type every day, and fully as much finds its 
way into the waste basket as ever goes to the 
compositor's case. Every telegraph editor 
remorselessly throws upon the floor columns 
of matter that has been sent by telegraph and 
paid for, but that cannot be used for want of 
space. The watchword of the newsroom has 
come to be condensation — boil down! boil 
down! The editor is no longer open to the 
venerable charge of killing a man in the next 
State to fill a column and then contradicting 
the murderous report to fill another. What 
not to print is the great problem of the news- 
paper editor's life. 

Naturally, all this has resulted in changes 
no less radical in the methods of news-gather- 
ing. The long-winded verbatim reporting of 
David Copperfield's time would be as much 
out of place in this decade as would the rickety 
old stage coaches that rattled up to the door 
of the White Horse Inn where Sam Weller 
flourished. 

But before taking up that part of the sub- 
ject let us get an idea of how a newspaper 
office is organized and what it is for. At the 
head of the whole establishment stands the 
proprietor; this may be one person or a large 
number of persons combined in a stock com- 
pany and represented by a business manager 
or publisher. In either case the result is sub- 
stantially the same; the power is concentrated 



EVOLUTION OF THE PRESS. 17 

in one man, and almost necessarily a wealthy 
man. It is money that makes the press go in 
this utilitarian age. It used to be ideas. In the 
old heroic days the publisher of a newspaper 
was a man who had a message that burned with- 
in him and forced him, as in the case of William 
Lloyd Garrison or Elijah P. Lovejoy, to set 
up a press that he might give his message to 
the world. Now all this is changed. A news- 
paper is a cold-blooded business enterprise. 
Its primary object is to make dividends for 
the capitalists who have invested in it. Even 
the dissemination of news is a mere secondary 
consideration, or would be if the dividends did 
not depend upon it; and as for the uplifting of 
the public morals or ideals, that scarcely cuts 
any figure at all in the purpose of the pub- 
lisher; but that, again, is only because moral- 
izing will not make money. 

You see, we editors are not given to wast- 
ing much love on the publishers. There is an 
ancient feud between the two, which is simply 
another phase of the ubiquitous labor- and- 
capital problem. Joe Howard, a New York: 
writer who was one of the speakers at the: 
World's Fair Press Congress in Chicago, 
voiced the general feeling of editors on the 
subject when he said: 

"The publishers of today are a lot of liter- 
ary sweaters who look upon all editors and 
reporters as especially made for them, to 



18 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

squeeze. They say, 'There is Howard; I'll 
take him, squeeze out the juice of his best 
years and then throw him away and get an- 
other. ' Fortunately, " he added, with a twinkle 
in his eye, " fortunately, in this case they can't 
get another." 

The fact is, the publisher is no better and 
no worse than any other business man — and 
neither is the editor. The newspaper office 
is not a Sunday-school room, anymore than a 
bank or a wholesale leather store is. A good 
man or a good woman can do much good inci- 
dentally in either place, yet we dare not forget 
that we are there not to preach but to make 
money. The enthusiastic reformer who is 
longing for a place on the staff to promulgate 
his ideas and reconstruct the world according 
to improved plans and specifications had bet- 
ter long no longer. If he wants to do that let 
him set up a press of his own and pay his own 
printing bills. It would save many a beginner 
in newspaper work, and especially the good 
and enthusiastic woman reformers of various 
sorts, a great deal of useless writing and bit- 
ter disappointment if they understood these 
inevitable limitations at the start. 

Under the publisher's control are two chief 
forces of men, often designated as the count- 
ing room and the editorial room. Besides these 
there are the compositors, the pressmen, the 
stereotypers, the mailing room force, and 



EVOLUTION OF THE PRESS. 19 

other subsidiary departments, all servants of 
one or both of the chief divisions before men- 
tioned. 

The counting room has its business man- 
ager, the editorial room its editor-in-chief and 
its managing editor, the composing room its 
foreman and compositors and proof-readers, 
the stereotyping and press rooms their re- 
spective craftsmen, and the etching depart- 
ment its artists and engravers. 

Now, notice how the editorial room is or- 
ganized. At the head stands the editor-in- 
chief, who shapes the editorial policy of the 
paper, writes some of the leading editorials 
and directs the work of the editorial writers. 

Next in authority is the managing editor, 
to whom the editor-in-chief delegates every- 
thing that he does not care to do himself, such 
as the pacifying of irate visitors and the de- 
vising of ways and means for filling all the 
other pages of the paper except the editorial 
page. Under his control we find the city ed- 
itor, all the country or foreign correspond- 
ents, and the editors of departments, such as 
finance, markets, real estate, railroads, thea- 
ters, sports, book reviews and the woman's 
department. 

On the larger papers the work of the 
managing editor is divided, giving him an as- 
sistant, the managing news editor, whose 
duty it is to look after the out-of-town cor- 



20 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

respondents and order the news from them 
and from all other available sources. 

Again, on all morning papers, we have 
another very important functionary — the 
night editor. He is the lieutenant in abso- 
lute charge of the paper during the late hours 
of the night, after the managing and news 
and city editors have gone home. He not 
only superintends the make-up, reads the 
proofs and alters anything that does not meet 
the approval of his editorial judgment, but 
he is on the look-out to see that every import- 
ant item of late news, both local and tele- 
graphic, is covered. He combines in his per- 
son the prerogatives and responsibilities of 
all the rest of the staff during the time when 
he is in power, which is usually from mid- 
night until the paper has gone to press in the 
morning. The night editor, therefore, holds 
a very responsible position, and receives a 
salary only next below that of the managing 
editor. 

Now, take another step in the subdivision 
and note the city editor and his staff. The 
city editor, though in a sense subordinate, is 
usually given almost complete control of his 
department, and is in many respects one of 
the most important persons in a newspaper 
office. He is the czar of the local room, and 
the reporters are his minions, subject to his 
orders at every hour of the day: they may 



EVOLUTION OF THE PRESS. 21 

not even go oat to lunch without his knowl- 
edge and consent. The city editor has for 
his domain all the news within a hundred 
miles of the city, and is almost absolute auto- 
crat of what shall go into the local columns 
and in what shape it shall go. His assistants 
— those who read over and edit the copy writ- 
ten by the reporters — are called copy-read- 
ers 

And now we have reached the bottom of 
the list — unless we include the copy boy. In 
other words, we have reached the reporter, 
the beginner, the bright young man who 
offers his services to the city editor in the 
firm belief that he knows it all, and who 
learns the first day that the things he doesn't 
know would fill a Sunday newspaper. He is 
the individual who actually does the hardest 
hustling for the least pay, and whose tenure 
of office is so precarious that he is supposed 
never to pass the waste-basket without look- 
ing in to see if his head is there. The re- 
porter, either masculine or feminine, is an in- 
teresting character, and especially so to those 
who have a covetous eye on his shoes. We 
will examine the creature and its ways with 
more microscopical attention farther along, 
when we can take a whole chapter to do the 
subject justice. 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 

Paradoxical though it may appear, one of 
the first and most important rules in newspa- 
per writing is this: Do rot begin at the be- 
ginning. Like most rules, however, this 
may do more harm than good without some 
qualification and explanation. Let me make 
the idea a little clearer, and then, when the 
reasons are given on which the law is based,, 
and the penalty which awaits the writer who' 
transgresses it, both reason and penalty will 
be found to be entirely sufficient. 

The style followed almost universally in 
large American newspaper offices at present 
is to put the most important and startling 
point first. Not only this, but the marrow of 
the whole story, whether the latter be two 
inches or two columns in length, should be 
told in the first paragraph, and the briefer the 
paragraph the better. This is the rule, 
though in its application it is subject to a 
hundred variations to avoid stereotyped forms. 
For instance, the rule may often be varied 
with good effect by starting off with a short, 
bright bit of dialogue, followed immediately 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 23 

by a condensed statement of the whole mat- 
ter to be covered by the article. 

It is hard to formulate any steady rules 
and regulations for so unsteady and unruly a 
thing as the American newspaper, whose 
main object in life is apparently that of being 
different today from what it was yesterday. 
But here we have at least one rule to which 
the beginner can scarcely tie too securely. 
Put your best, strongest, most startling state- 
ment first. Get the pith and point of your 
whole article into the first sentence, or at 
least into the first paragraph, so that the 
rest of the story might be "killed" and the 
news would still be "covered." Shun long- 
winded introductions as you would a palsy. 
Give the point first and leave the introduc- 
tion and explanation to come afterward. 
This is the first and greatest commandment, 
and the penalty for breaking it is the waste- 
basket and swift oblivion. 

If you should lay down the book without 
getting another idea, and yet learn thorough- 
ly this one simple journalistic trick, I should 
be almost content, for, in the language of the 
sainted Barnum, "this alone is worth the 
price of admission." 

Do not make the fatal error of thinking 
that a newspaper story must be told in chro- 
nological order, beginning in the once-upon-a 
time-there-was-a-little-boy style, and leading 



24 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

up, in the dear old granny crescendo, to the 
thrilling climax in which the way ward young- 
ster is devoured by the retributive bear. The 
proper newspaper order is unusually the ex- 
act reverse of that. So, if a modern little 
boy ever did do such a naughty thing as to 
run away from his mamma, and if a bear ever 
did do such an un-bearlike act as to eat any- 
body, • the proper way to begin the story for 
newspaper purposes would be something like 
this: "Johnny Dodge was devoured whole 
this morning, copper-toed boots and all, by 
an enormous grizzly bear. He had run away 
from home," and so on, ending with the sol- 
emn moral about the total depravity of small 
boys in general, if you must have a moral. A 
sermonizing turn given to a newspaper article, 
however, you will soon discover, accomplishes 
nothing more than to elicit sundry naughty 
words from the copy-reader as he reaches for 
his destroying blue pencil. 

To take a more modern and probable in- 
stance : If some poor woman has been abused 
by her husband, thrown out on the street, 
and, struggling for weeks against poverty 
and disgrace, finally succumbs to her load of 
sorrow and ends the tragedy of her life by 
suicide, it is this last, most startling fact that 
should make the first sentence. Don't begin 
back at the first drink that was the beginning 
of the whole tragedy and work up to the cli- 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 25 

max as you would and should in an oration 
or sermon; but put your climax first, follow 
it with a resume of the whole sad story in the 
next half-dozen lines, then begin a new para- 
graph and tell the whole narrative from the 
beginning, taking care, wherever possible, 
to put the best and freshest matter to the 
front, and to crowd the parts of the story 
already known into the background toward 
the end of the article. 

Two potent reasons have caused this style 
to be adopted almost involuntarily, and per- 
haps in some cases unconsciously, by the 
metropolitan daily papers. One is the tre- 
mendous volume of news demanding a place 
in the press; the other is the wish to catch 
the eye of the reader, fix his attention, and 
give him a chance to get the pith of the 
story in a nutshell if he has not the time or 
the desire to go into details. 

The more nearly any newspaper, no mat- 
ter how large or how small or whether pub- 
lished in New York or in Sitka, can follow 
this style in the construction of its news 
stories and of its headlines, the better it will 
be liked by busy men and the greater chance 
it will have to weather the financial storms 
amid which the modern galley is so prone to 
founder. It is the ideal plan of construction 
for a newspaper article, from a business 
man's standpoint, and can never be improved 



26 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

upon for the purposes of men who have only 
twenty or thirty minutes a day to give to 
newspapers, and yet who must keep posted 
on the run of the world's events. 

The ignorance of American country editors 
regarding the proper construction of a news 
story is remarkable, considering their general 
intelligence and success in other lines. A 
knowledge of this one professional secret 
would often give an editor an advantage that 
would enable him in the end to distance half 
a dozen equally able competitors that were 
ignorant of it and that kept on throwing their 
news together in the cumbrous old style and 
writing heads over their cOlums that told 
substantially nothing of the narrative to be 
found thereunder. 

This matter of headlines, by the way, is 
a study in itself, and is understood in few of 
the smaller offices. The object of a headline 
over a news story is to tell the whole tale— so 
far as this can be crowded into the specified 
number of letters that compose the line. The 
main head — usually made a fulljine — should 
therefore contain a verb, expressed or im- 
plied, as well as the leading noun in the story, 
the whole aim being to crowd just as much of 
the story into the line as possible. Here it is 
easy to see why the best papers try to avoid 
the use of "the" at the beginning of head- 
lines. This colorless word simply crowds 
out some other with more meaning in it. 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 27 

The first sub-head should usually be ex- 
planatory of the main headline, amplifying 
the original statement. The other sub- 
heads — for most papers use "big heads" or 
"slug heads" over news articles exceed- 
ing one-half or two thirds of a column in 
length — should recapitulate the more im- 
portant details contained in the body of the 
article, so that the whole head, when read 
through, will sum up the story in a nutshell. 

Thus the hurried reader gets a general 
idea of the news of the day by simply read- 
ing the headlines of his paper. If he has 
more time, he may read the opening para- 
graph of the more important articles, thus 
getting the stories a little more fully; while, 
if he is specially interested in any particular 
subject, he can in a moment pick out an article 
relating to it and read the whole. 

Never, then, begin a head with "the," "a" 
or "an," and try to avoid beginning sub-heads 
with those colorless words. Cram as much 
meaning into the headlines as possible. 
Furthermore, try to avoid beginning your 
story with "the;" young writers are prone to 
begin all their paragraphs with that common- 
place word. 

Getting the news is, of course, the first 
requisite for success in newspaper publish- 
ing; it is better to get the story into the type- 
forms upside down than to spend too much 



28 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

time trying to write it correctly, and thus to 
let some other paper get ahead of you or to 
be too late to get the article into that day's 
edition at all. But, with this exception, 
there is no more important point for the ed- 
itor than that he get his material into such 
shape that the reader can find the most news 
of importance in the briefest space of time. 
Especially is this of vital importance in a 
hustling young Western city or in any com- 
munity where men and women are kept in 
hourly remembrance of the fact that time is 
money and that money is their only salvation 
from the wolf that is never very far from 
their doors. It will pay every country editor 
to realize this fact. The time is coming when 
no publisher can succeed without correctly 
constructed news columns. That time has 
already come in all our largest American 
cities, where the competition is fierce and the 
time of readers limited by the never-ending 
rush of business duties. 

The myriad interests demanding repre- 
sentation in the modern newspaper, and the 
consequent imperative necessity of ''boiling 
down" everything, sometimes at a few min. 
utes' notice, have also aided in producing 
this typical Yankee newspaper style. They 
have made it imperative that all matter shall 
be put into a shape allowing of quick conden- 
sation, even after it is in type. This dessert- 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 29 

first, soup-last style meets the requirements 
of the case. When some unexpected and im- 
portant event occurs and claims several extra 
columns of the editor's space, he can make 
room by simply "killing" the last paragraphs 
of the other stories, instead of having to re- 
write them all in a more condensed form or 
throw something out bodily. 

Here is where young out-of-town corre- 
spondents often make their fatal error. Some- 
thing of importance happens in their commu- 
nity, and they telegraph a long account of it 
to -their papers, beginning with the dull minu- 
tiae of a general introduction and leading up 
to the grand climax, in which the nugget of 
the news is hidden at the end. The telegraph 
editor gets it, most likely at a late hour; he is 
under orders to cut everything down to the 
marrow, because the local department has a 
big sensation with which it is going to fill 
more than its usual space. The hard- worked 
slave at the telegraph desk glances over the 
correspondent's dispatch and notes with a 
groan that the only way in which he can 
make it come into the reduced space is to 
write the whole story over again. 

' ' Rush your stuff ; only ten minutes left 
till press time," the managing editor adjures 
him in passing the door. 

It may be important matter, but on the floor 
it goes, from date line to grand climax, with 



30 S7 EPS INTO JO URN A L ISM. 

a muttered but forcible remark by the sub- 
editor that is far from being complimentary to 
the unconscious correspondent. The paper 
comes out, but the reporter looks in vain for 
a line of the story that he wrote so carefully ; 
and his friends look in vain for it, too. and 
blame him for not having attended to his busi- 
ness. In the next mail he gets a letter from 
the managing editor inclosing, not the check 
that might have been, but a curt notification 
that his services as correspondent will no 
longer be required. Failure — utter failure — ■ 
and all for lack of knowledge of this little 
trick in the arrangement of his materials. 

Perhaps a reference to my personal experi- 
ence would be pardonable at this point. When 
I began writing for the newspapers I could 
have been saved many a bitter disappointment 
and many a column of almost useless work if 
some kind mortal had told me two compara- 
tively simple things : the importance of put- 
ting the gist of the whole story into the first 
paragraph, and the equal importance of get- 
ting " copy " into the office early. A realizing 
knowledge of these two points would be worth 
many dollars to every beginner. We have 
already seen the fate of an ill-constructed story 
when it comes in late. If it had been rightly 
built and yet had come in late, the only differ- 
ence would have been that the first paragraph 
or two would have been used instead of the 



PLAN OF AN AR TICL E. 31 

whole going into the waste-basket. As this sort 
of correspondence is usually paid for by the 
amount appearing in print, it is not hard to 
see that this matter of promptness is almost 
as important as the other. 

Here, then, we have at least two command- 
ments of the literary decalogue : Get your 
news to the editor as quickly as your lucky 
stars will let you, and, Carry the news to your 
readers with the cream always on top. Be 
sure, too, to get these three things into your 
first paragraph : the actors, the place and the 
time at which the event occurred. You can- 
not be far astray if you have these, woven in 
so as to tell the vital point of the news, in 
the opening sentences of the story. 

And now, before going to other divisions 
of the subject, let us attend carefully, once 
for ail, to a horde of minor points which, indi- 
vidually, seem trifling, but which, taken col- 
lectively, are of the greatest importance, 
especially to the beginner. They should be 
learned so thoroughly at the start that the 
right method will ever afterward be as second 
nature to the writer. 

Whatever you do, don't write on both sides 
of the paper — not even if you have to use a 
new sheet for the last half dozen words of an 
article. Copy written on both sides of the paper 
proclaims its author to be a novice of the ten- 
derest emerald hue, and its fate is sealed from 



32 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

the beginning. There is nothing of fanciful 
ultra-refinement about this requirement ; it is 
based on the most solid and sensible of rea- 
sons. In all large daily paper offices each page 
of the copy is cut into short pieces or ' ' takes, " 
and the takes are numbered consecutively and 
given to as many different compositors. Imag- 
ine the mixture a foreman would have on his 
hands if he were to undertake to cut up copy 
written on both sides. The continuation of 
one man's take would be on the back of an- 
other printer's copy. In order to use such an 
article it would be necessary to rewrite half of 
it on new paper, and the articles are few and 
far to seek for which an editor will go to all 
that trouble. 

The best size of paper to use is about 6x10 
inches, as this is most convenient for all con- 
cerned. Plain print paper of about that size 
and of sufficient firmness to allow the use of 
either ink or peucil is usually furnished in 
newspaper offices, and this is always accept- 
able. It may be bought cheaply at any pa- 
per house or printing office. The size men- 
tioned is best because if the sheets are much 
larger they cover up too much of the printer's 
case, and if they are smaller they are not so 
convenient for the copy reader. 

Copy written in pencil is perfectly accept- 
able, provided the manuscript is clear and the 
pencil soft and black. An editor abominates 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 33 

hard pencils and pale ink. Refrain from stir- 
ring his thoughts to mutiny by dim writing, 
and you will be kind to yourself. The majority 
of reporters use a soft pencil for their work, 
though not a few use pen and ink. For my 
part, I prefer the pen to the pencil and the 
typewriter to either. The machine is rapidly 
coming into general use in newspaper offices 
and the time has already come when the 
reporter who can manipulate the typewriter 
has a decided advantage in securing a position. 
It has also come to be true that the outside 
contributor is almost compelled to have his 
article typewritten if he wants it to have the 
fullest chance of acceptance. So, if you are 
contributing an article to a strange editor it 
will pay to have it typewritten if you can ; 
but if that is not practicable it will answer 
almost as well to have it clearly written in ink. 

In manuscript it is often better to print for- 
eign words or unusual names in schoolboy 
style ; in fact, mos offices have a standing rule 
that reporters must thus print out all proper 
names. But be sure you do not thus display 
your ignorance in primary school arts by turn- 
ing your "s" rear end to, or dotting your capL 
tal I's, or mixing caps and lower case letters 
indiscriminately . 

The main point, after all, is to have the arti- 
cle written as legibly as possible. Blind, care- 
less writing is not only an injustice to your-- 



34 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

self, making your copy less likely to be ac- 
cepted and less likely, if accepted, to be printed 
correctly ; but it is also an imposition upon 
the editor, who has to puzzle over it, and still 
more upon the compositor, who is paid by the 
number of types he sets, and for whom every 
moment lost is wages lost. A prevalent idea 
is that a printer can decipher anything short 
of a cuneiform inscription ; it is true that an 
old printer can make sense out of scrawls that 
an ordinary business man would not pretend 
to read ; but it is also true that it takes much 
time and usually considerable profanity to do 
it, and after it is done the author is not unlikely 
to consider the translation painfully free. 

And don't be stingy of paper. Leave mar- 
gins of about an inch at the tops of pages and 
of a half or three-quarters of an inch at the 
left-hand side and bottom. The top margin 
is necessary because the pages are pasted 
together, one sheet after another, before the 
copy is cut for the printer. The other mar- 
gins are needed to give the copy-reader room 
for making corrections, and a liberal space 
should be left between sentences and lines for 
the same purpose. Leave at least one-fourth 
of an inch between the lines. Try, too, to get 
about the same number of words on all the 
pages, so that the editor can estimate from 
the folio numbers how many words there are 
in the article and how much space it will fill 
in the paper. 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 35 

Be sure to* "folio " or number your pages. 
The folio figure is usually placed in the mid- 
dle of the page at the top, with a small arc of 
a circle under it to prevent its being mistaken 
for a part of the article. Draw a small dash 
under the end of your article to show that it is 
complete. 

Let the sheets remain flat, if possible, as 
folding, especially crosswise, makes the sheets 
inconvenient to handle. Above all, do not 
roll your copy, for that makes it unman- 
ageable, so that it will not lie on the composi- 
tor's case. If you are sending it by mail and 
do not find it convenient to enclose the flat 
sheets between pieces of pasteboard, the next 
best way is to fold the copy lengthwise ; you 
can always get a long envelope at the post- 
office to contain it in that shape. Never pin 
the pages together ; that will stamp yon as a 
novice almost as surely as writing on both 
sides of the paper or beginning your article 
with a letter to the editor instead of putting 
the letter on a separate sheet. 

Speaking of writing to editors : Make it 
short. As the absent-minded editor wrote in 
his missive after propounding a delicate and 
important question to his best girl: "Write 
legibly and on only one side of the paper, 
stating nothing but what is strictly to the 
point." 

Abbreviations are rather to be avoided 



36 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

entirely in printers' copy until you become 
familiar with the ways of an office and learn 
how far they are allowable ; then you will be 
able to save considerable time by their use in 
certain cases. When you write an abbrevia- 
tion and wish to indicate to the compositor 
that he is to spell the word out in full, lightly 
draw a small arc of a circle under it, or, as is 
the custom in some offices, inclose the word 
partly or wholly in a circle. As a period in 
manuscript is hard to distinguish from a com- 
ma, it has become the almost universal custom 
to inclose the period in a small circle or to 
discard the dot entirely and use in its stead a 
small cross. The proper use of the colon, 
semicolon, comma, exclamation, question and 
quotation marks are best learned by the study 
of any good book or magazine, and their use 
must be mastered by everyone who expects 
to succeed as a writer. 

The proper formation of the paragraph can 
also be learned by observation in reading, but 
few people take the trouble to master it until 
they get it drilled into them in a newspaper 
office. Be sure to indent the first line of each 
paragraph ; begin the first line at least an 
inch farther to the right than the beginning of 
the rest of the lines. Nothing will more 
quickly give a slovenly look to a manuscript 
than ending a sentence about the middle of 
the page and then starting the next out flush 



PLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 37 

with the left-hand edge, as if you had not 
started to make a paragraph at all. The com- 
positor especially detests this kind of irregu- 
larity in copy, for he cannot tell whether to 
make a paragraph in the type or not, and 
if he guesses wrongly he will have a very 
annoying correction to make when the proof 
comes back to him. 

This is a matter of so much importance that 
most newspaper men write a paragraph mark 
either at the beginning or end of every para- 
graph, or in both places, if there is the least 
chance of a misunderstanding. This mark is 
very necessary, for instance, when the end of 
a paragraph happens to come at the end of 
the sheet, with a full line. The printer get- 
ting this page alone could not tell that there 
was not more to follow, without this mark to 
indicate the fact. 

You will have little trouble in knowing 
how to paragraph your matter if you remem- 
ber that every paragraph is a little article in 
itself, written on some subdivision of the 
topic in hand. Each paragraph could have a 
headline over it and stand alone. For in- 
stance, the one which you are now reading 
might be entitled, "How to Paragraph Mat- 
ter." These subdivisions of an article, it is 
true, may be re-subdivided indefinitely, so 
that different writers may paragraph the 
same article differently; but you cannot go 



38 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

far wrong if you make a paragraph each time 
you make a new point in the argument and 
never let a paragraph be longer than about 
200 words. In writing dialogue, commence a 
new paragraph every time there is a change 
of speakers. 

If you have forgotten somewhere in the 
article to make a paragraph where there 
should be one, all that is necessary to have 
it set in type correctly is to write a paragraph 
mark at the point in question. If you have 
made a paragraph where there should be 
none, make a "run-in" mark — a curving line 
connecting the end of one sentence with the 
beginning of the next. Use the same mark 
when you have canceled several sentences or 
words, thus bridging over the break that has 
been made. When at the top or bottom of 
the page the matter has been written in the 
shape of a paragraph and there should be 
none, run a line out from the beginning or 
end of the sentence, as the case may be, to 
the edge of the paper; this means, "Make 
even," and the printer will make no para- 
graph there. 

If you have canceled a word or sentence 
and afterward rue the cancellation, put a 
line of dots under the words that you wish to 
restore and write on the margin of the page 
the word "Stet." This means "Letit stand," 
and every printer is a classical scholar to the 
extent of understanding it. 



PLAN OF ANIAR TICLE. 39 

Divide words only at the ends of syllables. 
Avoid the division of a word a.t the end of a 
page; also the writing of "John" at the bot- 
tom of one page and "Smith" at the top of 
the next. And, more important still, avoid 
runnirg the last few words of a paragraph 
over to the top of the new page. A broken 
line of this kind at the top of a printed col- 
umn is unpardonable and brands the work as 
that of a blacksmith; and this, to some de- 
gree, is the case with a broken line at the top 
of a manuscript or typewritten page; not 
only does it look untidy, but it is likely to 
give a great deal of trouble to the compositor 
in a way that any printer will explain if 
you ask him. 

One line under a letter or word shows 
that the word is to be set in italic type; two 
lines, that it is to be set in small caps, and 
three lines, caps or full capital letters. The 
drawing of lines under all emphasized words 
is a relic of barbarism and will count against 
you if you do it in a^ manuscript sent to an 
editor nowadays. That underscore in each 
case means italics, and it is seldom indeed 
that italics are used now to indicate emphasis. 
People who know enough to read at all usu- 
ally have an idea that they can interpret 
plain English without being furnished with 
a diagram of it. 

This underscoring, which is the pet failing 
of the feminine writer, is also entirely un- 



40 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

necessary in private letters. But the young 
man who presses the letters to his bosom 
may take issue with me on that point. At 
any rate, for literary work, use italics very 
sparingly; almost the on]y case in wmich 
they are necessary is that of foreign words, 
and, perhaps, to indicate the names of news- 
papers and magazines. 

The habit of continually quoting words to 
emphasize them is a similar mark of rusticity. 
Don't quote words or phrases unless you 
mean to indicate that they are those of some 
one else; and in such cases etiquette usually 
demands, too, that the reader should kuow 
who that some one else is. And in this con- 
nection let me warn the young writer to ad- 
jure hackneyed expressions and trite quota- 
tions of all kinds. 

Quoting strange words or ordinary words 
used in an extraordinary sense is often neces- 
sary, but the reader must know from what 
lingo the writer is quoting, and this use of 
the marks must be indulged in sparingly. In 
short, temperance — temperance in ail tilings, 
and especially in italics and quotation marks 
— is the golden text of this particular lesson. 

It is the almost universal custom among 
newspapers to inclose in quotation marks 
titles of* books, songs, or dramas; also titles 
of articles when referred to in the text. 

But every well-regulated office has rules 
of its own governing the use of quotation 



FLAN OF AN ARTICLE. 41 

marks, italics and small caps, telling what 
words should be capitalized and what should 
not, and all the rest of these minor points, 
which vary more or less in different offices. 
This is called the newspaper's "style," and 
one of the many revelations that come to the 
new recruit in journalism is the fearful and 
wonderful diversity of these "styles." In one 
office the editors will have rules for capitaliz- 
ing about half the nouns in the language; in 
another just across the street they will capi- 
talize nothing but the name of their own 
paper and perhaps that of the deity. 

These mooted points of capitalization, how- 
ever, do not need to trouble you until you 
get on the staff of some paper. In the mean- 
time, it is far more important to acquire a 
clear, strong style of writing. Avoid pa- 
rentheses and parenthetical expressions of all 
kinds; two short sentences are ten times bet- 
ter than one long sentence with a parenthesis 
in the middle. Learn to be direct. Go straight 
to the point. Use the shortest words that 
you can find to express your meaning, and 
then when you say something it will make a 
mark on the mind. 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 

In nine cases out of ten the beginner gets 
his first training as a reporter. Reporting is 
the gateway to journalism, and the man who 
has once made a triumphal entry through it 
has the newspaper world at his feet. Or, to 
be more prosaically accurate, he will have a 
first-rate chance to become a sub-editor, if a 
"desk job" is to his taste, and thence to work 
up to the higher and more lucrative positions. 

If it did not involve such an alarming 
stretch of the imagination, the cit3 T editor 
might be called the angel with the flaming 
sword who stands at the entrance to the jour- 
nalistic Eden of young men's dreams. At 
any rate, he is a very important character 
for us just at this point, and it behooves us 
to make a friend of him. at once. As we have 
seen, the city editor is the absolute despot of 
the local room and its editorial staff. 

But if the city editor has power he also 
has responsibility to match. One of the re- 
quirements of his position is that he shall 
never "get scooped"— in other words, no im- 
portant item of news within a hundred miles 
of his desk is to escape him. How does he 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 43 

get wind of everything that happens? 
Through all manner of sources, but mainly 
by sending reporters to investigate "tips" 
which give promise of news. 

These "tips" are gotten by closely watch- 
ing all the latest issues of rival papers, not- 
ing announcements of future events, taking 
up topics that have not been exhausted or 
promise new developments, and keeping an 
"assignment book" with the day and hour at 
which each subject will be ripe for investiga- 
tion by a reporter. Much of the court and 
police news, and the like, is gathered by a 
systematic round made every day by a man 
detailed for that work, and these reporters 
while on the outside are always on the watch 
for important "tips" and notify the city ed- 
itor by telephone when they happen to stum- 
ble upon anything not in their line. Many 
of the "tips" also come from friends of the 
paper, or from people who are interested in 
having a certain event reported. 

The result is that in these days of swift 
communication it is rarely that a wide-awake 
city editor fails to get any important item of 
news. But when he is so unfortunate as to 
miss an item of moment he is sure to hear 
something from the editor-in-chief that no 
man likes to hear. 

We are likely to think that Damocles, with 
a sharp sword suspended over his head by a 



44 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

single hair, had a rather uncomfortable time 
of it at his royal meal. But Damocles was a 
bobolink in nesting time compared with the 
city editor of a great daily, who forever sits 
with two such swords dangling over him, 
ready to carve off his editorial head without 
a moment's warning. One of these is the 
deadly ''scoop," and the other is the no less 
sanguinary libel suit. To let some other pa- 
per get ahead of him in the publication of an 
important piece of news, or, on the other 
hand, to print something that will give cause 
for a damage suit against the proprietor — 
either of these two things is liable at any mo- 
ment to cost him his position. It is as if 
Ulysses had been compelled to steer all his 
life between Scylla and Charybdis; sooner or 
later one or the other is pretty sure to wreck 
him or swallow him up. 

At his desk he sits all day, with the tele- 
phone in front of him, messenger boys beside 
him and reporters close at hand, ready to be 
feet and fingers for the ideas in his head. 
And upon the shoulders of his reporters he 
has an uncomfortable way of dropping his 
own weight of responsibility. This brings 
us to the subject of our present investigation. 

The reporter is the bright young man of 
impecunious purse who does the hardest and 
most disagreeable work and gets the least 
pay for it; who gets the most hard kicks and 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 45 

the least hard cash and lives perennially in 
the midst of hard times, associates with a 
hard crowd, and finally succeeds in making of 
himself a pretty hard case. The reporter is 
expected to be brilliant on the spur of the 
moment, to be witty for a consideration, to 
be profound in a hurry and superficial to 
order; he must keep on the good side of the 
saloon politicians and at the same time win 
the confidence of the W. C. T. U. ; he must 
have a religious vocabulary for the preacher, 
drawing-room manners for the ladies, slang 
of assorted grades for the vulgus; he must 
surely be all things to all men, else how can 
he report a sermon in the morning and a 
cock-fight in the afternoon without getting 
the terms mixed? 

Young man, before you realize that fond 
dream of yours and become a reporter — be- 
fore you go to work amid the blinding rush 
and smoke of a great city and the smudge be- 
gins to soil your shirt front and your soul, 
let me preach you a little sermon. I promise 
that it shall be orthodox in form and a model 
for brevity. I will take my text from the 
book of a thousand mens' bitter experience, 
and my theme shall be what might be called 
the three graces of the newspaper man — in- 
dustry, honesty and reliability; and the great- 
est of these is reliability. 

First, however brilliant a man or woman 
may be, without industry, patience, persever- 



46 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

ance and persistency there is little hope of 
advancement. The city editor has no use for 
the reporter who pleads off from a midnight 
assignment because he is tired. While such 
a man is resting the other fellow is gathering 
the plums. 

Secondly, dishonesty and deception may 
make a glittering success of it for a time, but 
the mask will be torn off sooner or later, and 
in a newspapar office it is usually sooner. 
Editors are good judges of character, and 
the reporter who thinks it is smarter to write 
a "fake" than to shag around and get the 
facts is a fool; and, verily, the fool and his 
job are soon parted. No matter whether that 
reporter's superior' be of the same stripe or 
not; he is undermining his superior's confi- 
dence, for even a knave knows that the man 
who will lie in his behalf will also lie to his 
detriment if the occasion presents itself. 

Thirdly and lastly, reliability combines 
all the graces. It is better to be a plodder 
and reliable than a genius that cannot be de- 
pended upon. The reliable man will be pre- 
ferred every time in the newspaper office. 
He will be given the most important assign- 
ments, will have the confidence of his em- 
ployers, and will be welcomed instead of re- 
buffed when he calls a second time upon a 
man for news. Reliability also includes per- 
sonal habits; the traditional groggy bohemian 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 47 

has no place in the modern newspaper office. 
A man must be habitually sober instead of 
habitually drunk. Even the periodical in- 
ebriate must go; he is always missing at the 
critical moment and is an insupportable bore. 
There is a homely text in my bible, and it 
ought to be in yours: A man can't drink 
whisky and stay in business. And if a man 
has grit enough to leave the drink alone he 
will not be likely to be troubled by the depths 
that lie still lower. 

Oh, the bright young manhood, the pre- 
cious enthusiasm, the mental strength and 
moral fiber that shrivels and sloughs away 
into loathsomeness at touch of the foul breath 
of the hell that lies under every great city 
and over which every reporter must tread 
day and night ! It is enough to wring a ser- 
mon even from a city editor. 

And now, dispensing with the doxology 
and the amen, let us return to our muttons. 
There is a cloud of dread by day and terror 
by night that forever hangs over a reporter; 
it is the fear of "falling down on an assign- 
ment." An item of news that he is sent to 
report is an "assignment," and "falling down 
on" it is failing for any reason to get it or 
"cover" it, as they say in a newspaper office. 
The reporter is in some respects in the posi- 
tion of the soldier — he must carry out his 
chief's orders or die in the attempt. No won- 



48 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

der that under the pressure of such a system 
he should acquire a reputation for impudence 
— cheek of leather, brow of brass. 

One of my first experiences in reporting 
was on a Chicago morning paper. Late one 
night the city editor gave me a queer assign- 
ment, based on this rather extraordinary 
notice : 

WANTED — To exchange— A brand-new 
double sleigh for a first-class servant girl. 

The advertisement was signed by a promi- 
nent man in South Evanston, and it seems 
that he had tacked up the foolish little note 
in the post-office there in a fit of joking des- 
peration, for he was short of servants and 
long on sleighs. 

"Take the midnight train for South Ev- 
anston and ask him what he means by this 
mysterious advertisement," w T ere my instruc- 
tions. 

"What! At this hour of the night?" I 

gasped, appalled at the effrontery of the act. 

"Certainly, and be lively about it, too. 

Rout him out of bed, get the story, and if it 

is worth anything wire me a column." 

I shall never forget how foolish and guilty 
I felt when I thumped on that innocent man's 
door about 1 o'clock at night and brought 
him rushing down stairs in his night clothes 
to see who had been murdered or where the 
fire was. I fully expected that he would 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 49 

assault me with intent to kill as soon as I an- 
nounced my business, or at least throw me 
down the front steps as I deserved. Fortu- 
nately he saw the funny side of the situation, 
and after a hearty laugh told me the series 
of domestic tribulations which, coupled with 
the utter absence of snow all winter, had sug- 
gested the joking "ad," and when I went to 
the telegraph office I was able with the liberal 
aid of my imagination to cover both my as- 
signment and myself with glory. 

If you once get an idea of the enormous 
pressure and fear of failure under which 
every conscientious reporter works, you will 
be less likely to give way to the overpowering 
temptation to slay him on the spot when he 
comes prying into your private affairs. And 
however much you may despise this pernicious 
inquisitiveness of the fin de siecle newspaper, 
it is as well not to forget that the very re- 
porter who does this impudent, prying work 
may despise it as much as you do. While we 
are fixing the blame, let us place it where it 
belongs— on the abnormal individualism of 
the age and country. 

Let us now take a peep into the sanctum 
of the city editor — the local room — the bar- 
racks of the reportorial corps, the place where 
the beginner is likely to have his first intro- 
duction into the journalistic world. On a 
morning paper the reporters are expected to 



50 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

be on hand for duty at 1 o'clock in the after- 
noon and to work until any time between 12 
and 2 at night, according to the demands of 
circumstances and the city editor. On an 
evening paper the usual hours are from 8 in 
the morning to 4 in the afternoon, with 15 or 
20 minutes snatched about noon for lunch. 

We will follow a reporter through his 
duties for one day and see what he does and 
how he does it. But first it may be well to 
correct a false idea which most people seem 
to have — that reporters wander about, hap- 
hazard and Micawber-like, waiting for news 
to turn up. Nothing could be much farther 
from the fact, for even the general- assign- 
ment man scarcely ever goes oat without be- 
ing sent for a particular piece of news, and 
usually to a designated place or person. 

Suppose you are a young man doing gen- 
eral assignments on a Chicago morning paper. 
It is 1 o'clock in the afternoon — the time when 
the work is getting under full blast for the 
next day's is'sue. You have just finished your 
breakfast and reported for duty. The editor 
sits within his cage making the afternoon 
assignments. He calls your name, and you 
are at his side in a moment, 

"I have a telephone message saying that a 
big steamer has crashed into the Halsted street 
bridge, cut it clean in two, and probably killed 
several men. Now fly. Telephone me the 
minute you have the main facts." 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 51 

Away you go. At the first corner you 
jump into a cab, for expense is not counted by 
a live newspaper when it is after important 
news. A crowd surrounds the place when 
you get there ; you have no time for cere- 
mony, so you push your way through. A 
policeman yells at you to stand back, and 
raises his club threateningly, but you show a 
reporter's star and are allowed to pass. 

One of the bridge tenders has just been 
rescued, dripping, from the filthy river, and 
though he is in no mood to talk you pounce 
upon him with your questions : "How did it 
happen?" "Whose fault was it?" "How 
many people were on the bridge at the time?" 
and so on. 

Below lies a half - submerged tug upon 
which the bridge has fallen. No one seems to 
know whether any of the crew were killed or 
not. Down you go to the deck of the tug, 
dangerous though it may be, and ply the res- 
cuers there with questions. You learn that 
all on board saved their lives by jumping and 
swimming, but that the machinery of the tug 
has been smashed into junk. The big steamer 
that has done, all the mischief seems to have 
come out of the melee with nothing more seri- 
ous than a badly battered nose. Then off you 
go to report to your chief. You may have to 
run a mile before you can find an available 
telephone, but keep a stiff upper lip ; such 
annoyances are part of the business. 



52 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

' ' Cover it up thoroughly and play it for a 
column," comes the order over the telephone. 

The next thing is to get the necessary data 
—the dimensions of the steamer, the names of 
the various men who have figured in the acci- 
dent, the captain's Version of the story to 
offset that of the bridge-tender — all the time 
keeping your eyes wide open for little inci- 
cents, funny, pathetic or exciting, with which 
to embellish your article. You will have little 
use for a note -book, except for a few figures 
and names. 

Then, with a vivid picture of the whole 
scene in your mind's eye, and making sure 
that no important feature has escaped atten- 
tion, you take the street car or cab for the 
office. During the ride you have your think- 
ing cap on, and are arranging the facts in 
your head so that when 3 t ou reach your desk 
you will have your opening sentences all 
ready to dash down, and the rest of the story 
arranged in your mind just as if you were go- 
ing to give the whole as an extempore speech, 
point after point, all reacty to flow from the 
nib of your pen as fast as you can scribble. 

That is the way it goes with the reporter 
who knows his business. But woe to the man 
who comes back with the whole thing a jum- 
ble in his head, so that he cannot write it out 
in a reasonable time. And woe to him, too, if 
through any ill luck or bad management he 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 53 

" falls down on" the assignment, and fails to 
get the matter for which he is sent. His 
reportorial head will not survive many such 
falls. Excuses, valid or lame, are of little 
avail ; the city editor has no time to waste in 
listening to excuses. 

We will say it is 5 :30 o'clock when you finish 
your 1500- word bridge story. After a hasty 
meal at a neighboring restaurant you are off 
on another assignment. A wealthy man at one 
of the hotels has been sued for breach of 
promise and you are detailed to get an inter- 
view with him. He answers your rap, peeps 
out, sees that you are a reporter and tries to 
slam the door in your face. But, no; sad ex- 
perience has taught you too many hard les- 
sons to let you be floored so easily as that; 
your No. 8 is inside the door and prevents it 
from closing. 

"My dear sir, you want to see me a great 
deal more than I want to see you," you say, 
politely. Then you quietly explain that your 
object is to get the truth in order to contradict 
the wild and compromising rumors that are 
afloat concerning him — in short, that you want 
to set him right before the world and hush the 
voice of calumny. 

Fall down on that assignment? Not much! 
Why, when you leave that man after fifteen 
minutes' talk he is not only in a good humor 
but actually grateful, and you have enough 



54 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

material to make a column if necessary. Per- 
haps you maybe compelled to resort to almost 
the same tactics with the woman in the case, 
if the editor decides that the dear public will 
want still more of the scandal. 

You and I have our private opinions about 
filling column after column with this sort of 
stuff ; but if we are reporters, 

" Ours not to reason why, 
Ours but to do or die." 

Besides, people who feel called upon to scold 
the editors should not forget that newspapers 
are just what their readers make them. The 
penny in the pocket of the reader is the ballot 
that settles the policy of the newspaper, and 
the majority rules. 

By 7 o'clock you have your third assign- 
ment — for we will imagine that this is an ex- 
tra-busy day. Perhaps this time you must 
investigate a saloon brawl, in which a man 
has been fatally stabbed. When you ask the 
saloonkeeper for the facts he says; "Oh, it 
was nothing. Come, have a cocktail. Tell 
your readers," he adds, with a wink, "that I 
keep a quiet, orderly place, and that this lit- 
tle affair occurred on the other side of the 
street." But as you are not the kind of a 
man who sells his honor for a drink, and as 
it might cake you half the night to hunt up 
the real story at the morgue and among the 
murdered man's friends, we will change the 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 55 

supposed assignment. You are just as likely 
to have been sent speeding away out of the 
city to a suburban town to report a straw- 
berry festival. 

Many people have an idea that reporters 
have a chance to attend all the jolly enter- 
tainments, enjoy the programs to the end, 
have a good time generally, and then go to 
their offices and write up the same at their 
leisure. Alas! I wish that, were the fact. 
But let me puncture that glittering bubble 
right here. 

When you are acting as a reporter you are 
a young man on duty. Upon reaching the 
gay scene of the strawberry festival you 
have no time for tete-a-tetes with the girls; 
no soft speeches and ice cream for you. You 
hustle around and find the managers, learn 
the number of people present and the proba- 
ble amount of the receipts, take in at a glance 
the salient features of the brilliant scene — 
the booths and costumes and blushing fruit 
vendors with cheeks as tempting as the straw- 
berries they are selling — get a synopsis of a 
speech that is to be made later in the even- 
ing — by literally bulldozing the speaker into 
letting you see his manuscript — and then, be- 
fore the music and speaking have even begun, 
you are off on the 9 o'clock train to write up 
the whole affair in the past-perfect tense at 
the dingy office, filling in the missing details 
from your imagination. 



56 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

When you get through with your half- 
column on this subject you may have a half- 
hour of idleness, or you may not have a min- 
ute. The fire alarm on the office wall rings, 
and you find yourself threading dark, disre- 
putable alleys, hunting up the night watch- 
man of the burning building to learn, if possi- 
ble, where and how the fire originated, inter- 
viewing the marshal, routing the owner of 
the building out of bed to tell him the news 
and find out the amount of insurance and the 
value of the ill-fated structure. Perhaps a 
wall falls and kills a fireman; no matter how 
dangerously close it came to you; your busi- 
ness is to get the name and residence of the 
poor fellow beneath, to give a vivid descrip- 
tion of how he fell at the post of duty, and to 
tell of the wife and family now left in sorrow 
and want. 

By the time you have put the last of your 
manuscript into the hands of the copy-reader 
it maybe 1 o'clock; or, if the fire was a big 
one, you may not be able to finish before 2, 
and the night editor may be after you toward 
the end with a sharp stick, adjuring you in 
the name of all the gods to hurry up the last 
sheets. 

At last "the jig is up." After the hard, 
wearing - day of eleven or twelve hours'] of 
mental toil and strain is over, a large per- 
centage of the staff may make a bee line to 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 57 

the nearest saloon to have the only recreation 
open to them at that time of night; but it is 
needless to say that those who have any seri- 
ous thoughts of future success are not among 
the revelers. After a plain but hearty sup- 
per, the sensible reporter turns in about 3 
o'clock, just when the birds are beginning to 
twitter among the orchard boughs at home, 
and sleeps like a rock — if he can for the city's 
din — until 11 in the morning; then, ham and 
eggs, and the swift, kaleidoscopic round of 
duties has begun again. 

And so it is the next day, and the next, 
from one month's end to another, until the 
very variety of one's duties becomes monot- 
onous; and yet there is a fascination in the 
life that will not let one give it up. It is hard 
work, but it is a splendid training for a 
young writer. It acquaints one with human- 
ity as. no other course of training can; and 
humanity, with its faults, foibles, hatreds, 
crimes, sorrows, loves and joys, is the great, 
exhaustless mine of precious ore waiting for 
the writer to extract its gold. Yet, on the 
other hand, too much of this hard, matter-of- 
fact writing and cruel realism of experience 
is likely to crush all the tenderer sentiments 
out of one's style, dwarf the romantic imagi- 
nation, and mar the delicacy of touch needed 
in order to be a successful novelist. 

A great city is to the novelist what a 



58 STEPS IN 10 JOURNALISM. 

mountain of gold-bearing quartz would be to 
the prospector. The miner must know how 
to get his ore out of the earth, and how to 
build a stamp mill in which to crush it; he 
must have great quantities of valuable quick- 
silver with which to extract the gold from 
the dross. And so the writer must be 
equipped with the proper knowledge and ex- 
perience before he can extract a story or a 
novel from the vast, seething mass of hu- 
manity around him. The best place in the 
world to get that knowledge and experience 
is on the local staff of a newspaper office. 
Only, of course, if a man aspires to be a 
maker of watches he must not devote too 
many of his years to forging steel and copper 
bars, or his hands will grow too horny for 
the more delicate work of manipulating pin- 
ions and hair springs. 

The man who wants to be a newspaper 
writer must read the news continually — espe- 
cially that in his own paper. He must not 
only keep track of the telegraphic and local 
columns and read over his own articles to see 
where they have been amended, but he must 
also keep in touch with the people who are 
his readers. A preacher may stand on a 
lofty pedestal of idealism and preach over 
the heads of his congregation and still re- 
ceive his salary, but the newspaper that tries 
it will soon be in a receiver's hands. 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 59 

One cannot work many hours under the 
direction of a city editor without discovering 
that one is working under pressure. "Miss 
Smith, I have another assignment for you as 
soon as you get that wedding written up;" 
"Jones, hustle that story; you are taking 
long enough to write it in verse;" "Brown, 
for heaven's sake, hurry up with that World's 
Fair stuff; it's almost time to close the forms;" 
adjurations like these, only much more lurid, 
are the whip and spur under which the new 
reporter finds himself struggling to collect 
his wandering wits. The result is that he 
soon learns concentration. He learns the 
value of time as he never learned it before. 
Especially on an afternoon paper must the 
work be done at high-pressure speed, where 
live minutes may mean the difference between 
success and failure for the reporter and for 
his paper as well. 

- Self-reliance is another thing that the re- 
porter learns in this stern school, for he is 
usually thrown upon his own resources as to 
the method of getting the news after which 
he is sent. He learns to have his wits about 
him, for he has no minutes to waste in taking 
false steps; a dozen other bright young fel- 
lows are on the alert to get ahead of him, a 
dozen other papers are eager to get a scoop, 
and he must be alive at every stage of the 
game. He learns to see things from the 



60 STB PS INTO JOURNALISM. 

newspaper point of view, which is the popu- 
lar view point, and to put his thoughts upon 
paper rapidly, easily and in logical order. 
He also learns to separate the wheat from 
the chaff by a mental winnowing process that 
he has never known before. 

The reporter has a chance to learn the 
relative value of news from an expert judge. 
When sent out to investigate a "tip" that 
gives promise of a story, the first thing that 
he does on his return is to report the results 
of his quest in the fewest possible words to 
the city editor. In a flash the latter will 
weigh the value of the story, take into ac- 
count the space still to be filled, and tell the 
reporter how many words to make of it — 
whether a stickful (about 160 words), two or 
three sticks, half a column or a column. Un- 
der this training the new man soon learns to 
judge for himself almost instinctively what 
an item is worth, and to avoid wasting time 
in collecting minutiae on a worthless lead. 
And the writing for a limited space teaches 
him the art of condensation and the scarcely 
less valuable trick of "writing against space," 
or spinning out a story without making it 
dull. 

Reporting is too likely to be looked upon 
as merely the lowest round in the ladder of 
journalism, to be left behind for editorial 
work as soon as possible. It must be admit- 



DAY WITH A REPORTER. 61 

ted that the present scale of salaries decided- 
ly encourages this view. Yet reporting is 
rightly coming to be regarded more and more 
as a profession in itself, and worthy of the 
best talent that can be devoted to it. The 
outlook for the reporter is steadily improv- 
ing. The time was when the largest item on 
the publisher's expense book was the white 
paper; latterly it has been the news; some 
day it will be the brains. 

The reporter's work is worthy the best 
powers even of a Macaulay. Indeed, the 
reporter should be a local Macaulay, study- 
ing to clothe the events which he chronicles 
in a living garment woven of the myriad 
trifling scenes and incidents that surround 
the main event, thus giving it vividness — in- 
terest — life. For such reporters there is an 
ever- increasing demand, though the pay is. 
not yet what it should be and must be to hold 
the best talent permanently in this depart- 
ment of journalism. 

Certain peculiar qualifications are neces- 
sary to make a good reporter, just as certain 
other traits are required to make a good 
business man or a successful preacher. The 
work demands quick and accurate thought 
rather than deep or sustained thought. The 
man or woman who could write a good critique 
on Kant's ethics would not be likely to make 
the best report of a row in a political conven- 



62 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

tion. Among the most important of re- 
portorial qualifications is that invaluable 
sixth sense called a ''nose for news," which 
is natural to some people, which may be ac- 
quired by others, and which still others can 
never get by any amount of training. There 
are those who can never learn to see a news 
item even if it thumps them over the head. 
An anecdote or two will illustrate the point. 

A young friend of mine on the Chicago 
Tribune was one evening reporting a banquet 
of the Carpenters' Council, along with a corps 
of reporters from the other papers. One of 
the speakers arose amid the wine drinking 
and laughter and read a long, prosy paper 
finding fault with the contractors for paying 
off their employes in saloons. Of course, 
such a temperance sermon at that moment 
seemed ill-timed. The banqueters and re- 
porters occupied themselves by yawning audi- 
bly and guying the speaker. But my friend 
had caught the scent of news at the first word 
and was carefully taking notes while his com- 
panions were laughing at him for it and pelt- 
ing him with paper wads. The next day, the 
other papers had only a brief routine report 
of the affair, while the Tribune had an article 
that made a sensation with its revelations of 
abuses exposed at the banquet of the Carpen- 
ters' Council, and that ultimately brought 
about a practical temperance reform on the 
point in question. 



DA Y WITH A REPORTER. 63 

A talented graduate of an Eastern college 
some years ago obtained a position on a New 
York paper through an able special article 
that he had written. Of course he was put 
upon general reporting at the start, and one 
of his first assignments was a balloon ascen- 
sion. In due time he returned and appeared 
at the city editor's desk. 

"Well, did you get stuff for a good story ? " 
"No; the thing was a fizzle. The whole 
affair was spoiled by an accident." 
"An accident ! What was it ? " 
"The balloon caught fire and caused a 
panic that killed about a dozen people, but — 
"Heavens ! Did you get their names ? " 
No; that had never occurred to him. He 
had gone to write up a balloon ascension. 

That brilliant old prevaricator, Herodotus, 
the Father of History, as he is sometimes 
called, wouldhave made a first-class reporter, 
for, whatever his failings, he had the news 
instinct to a remarkable degree. This, when 
it once takes possession of one, is almost 
stronger than death itself. I think, if a mod- 
ern reporter had been in Pompeii when that 
city was overwhelmed by the outpourings of 
Vesuvius, the first thing he would have done 
would have been to sit down some place where 
the falling ashes would not burn up his copy 
and write out a vivid report of a column at 
least, and dispatch it to his paper before 
thinking of the secondary matter of escape. 



64 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Other important qualities that the success- 
ful reporter must have are self-confidence, a 
wide knowledge of men and of the ways of 
the world, quickness both of perception and 
of expression, fertility of resource, and a 
power to absorb and retain information of 
every conceivable sort. With him no knowl- 
edge will be useless; and sometimes in a pinch 
he will be fortunate if he has a vivid imagina- 
tion and the faculty of guessing shrewdly and 
accurately. He must be a close student of 
human nature; tact will often be more valu- 
able to him than talent, and personal magnet- 
ism than half a dozen ancient languages. 

It is rarely indeed that all these qualifica- 
tions are found in the same person, and when 
a paper gets hold of a reporter who even ap- 
proximates this ideal it considers him worth 
his weight in gold. 

You will sometimes find on a newspaper 
staff men who are illiterate, uncouth, poor 
talkers and writers, and yet who hold their 
positions long after more polished members 
of the staff have been discharged. This is 
rather discouraging to the university gradu- 
ate and the man who has spent years in per- 
fecting his literary style. But the secret is 
told in a few words: He is an excellent 
"hustler." Somehow, he always succeeds in 
getting an item of news when he is sent after 
it, and that, after all, is the great thing in 



DA Y WITH A REPORTER. 65 

newspaper work. There are hundreds of 
people who can write correct English where 
there is one who can get information out of a 
stone wall or out of a man who iiatly refuses 
to be interviewed. And a city editor would 
rather have a report in which every sentence 
mangles the grammar and makes the diction- 
ary shudder than be scooped. 

One of the most prolific newspaper hacks 
in Chicago once remarked that he did not 
consider a man worthy of being called a re- 
porter unless he could make good reading out 
of anything under the sun that he might be 
asked to write about, from Jupiter's moons to 
a lamp post or a dead mouse in a puddle. 
"Why," he added, "I never fell down on an 
assignment in my life.*' The very egotism of 
the man betrays part of the secret of his suc- 
cess. Perhaps it also throws some light inci- 
dentally upon the cause of the average news- 
paper's woeful inaccuracy and multitudinous 
"fakes." 

It is the mission of the reporter to repro- 
duce facts and the opinions of others, not to 
express his own. One of the articles of in- 
struction given by the A ssociated Press to its 
employes is this: "All expressions of opin 
ion on any matter, all comment, all political, 
religious or social bias, and especially all 
personal feeling on any subject, must be 
avoided." This editorializing is the besetting 



66 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

sin of the country correspondent and a weari- 
ness of the flesh to the copy-reader who has 
to expunge the tyro's colorings and invidious 
remarks about individuals. Opinions are the 
peculiar province of the editorial writer. The 
spirit of modern journalism demands that the 
news and the editorials be kept distinctly 
separate. The one deals with facts, the other 
with theoretical interpretations, and it is as 
harmful to mix the two in journalism as it is 
to combine church and state in government. 
This, at least, is the only safe theory for the 
beginner. 

If you have a simple, sensible, breezy 
style with a sparkle in it, the newspaper 
reader will forgive a good deal of inaccuracy 
in your matter; and if you are invariably re- 
liable in your statements the public will for- 
give a moderate degree of dullness in your 
style. But the writer who can combine both 
reliability and sparkle is the one who will 
reach the top of the profession. On the 
other hand, the unpardonable sin in journal- 
ism is to be both stupid and inaccurate. 

The reporter has to be courageous, sharp 
as a hawk, mentally untiring, physically en- 
during. He comes in contact with everybody, 
from monarchs to beggars, from noblemen to 
nobodies. He sees the tragedy and comedy 
of human life, its cynicism and toadyism, its 
passionate struggling and feverish ambition, 



DAY WITH A REWRTER. 67 

its sham and subterfuge, its lavish wealth 
and gasping poverty, its joy and sorrow, its 
good deeds and its most hideous crimes. His 
is a strange career, with its constant predic- 
aments and anxieties But it is an attract- 
ive, fascinating life to many, because of its 
wondrous change and kaleidoscopic variety. 



INTERVIEWS AND NEWS. 

The newspaper interview is peculiarly an 
American product — or was until quite recent- 
ly. It is a democratic growth arising out of 
our widespread curiosity concerning the pri- 
vate life and opinions of public men. And 
in America every person who does or says 
something remarkable is a public person. 
The possibility — theoretical, at least — which 
every man or woman has, of attaining dis- 
tinction in any particular field, produces a 
consuming desire to measure our own shoes 
in the footprints of those who have mounted 
to where we fain would stand. 

As our form of government has led us into 
regarding a public man as public property, 
the newspaper reporter goes about supplying 
this inquisitive demand with a business-like 
sang f raid that is liable to jar sometimes upon 
the delicate self-esteem of the victim, especi- 
ally if he be one of those lofty individuals 
who believe that the world was created chief- 
ly for their personal convenience and whose 
golden rule is, The public be — Vanderbilted. 
It is indisputably true that the interview, like 
every other good thing, is often abused and 



INTER VIE WS AND NE WS. 69 

that the Yankee interviewer is sometimes 
needlessly impudent. But this does not pre- 
vent the interview from being one of the most 
useful features of modern journalism, and 
one that has come to stay. It is even creep- 
ing into the British journals which so long 
denounced it as barbarous and tabooed it as a 
vulgar Americanism. But, for that matter, 
we never could agree with our British cousins 
on newspaper matters. They call our papers 
impudent; we call theirs dull. According to 
our standards, the English have proved them- 
selves thus far the best novelists and the 
Americans the best journalists. 

So, Herbert Spencer may inveigh against 
the interview as an invasion of personal lib- 
erty, and even William Dean Howells may 
characterize it as an abominable practice, yet 
it will always remain a branch of journalism 
which no student of that profession can afford 
to neglect. Oliver Wendell Holmes, with his 
characteristic genial sarcasm, may describe 
the interviewer as a product of over-civiliza- 
tion, who does for the living what the under- 
taker does for the dead, and may suggest that 
he should wear a badge like a war corres- 
pondent and produce a certificate from three 
clergymen of the same belief, but even this 
last brilliant leaf upon the old literary tree 
must acknowledge that he buys the paper 
that prints the most and best interviews with 



70 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

other great men of the time The interview 
is the nearest relative to the novel among the 
motley crowd of news articles, and the novel, 
be it remembered, heads the popular reigning 
dynasty of the age, in literature. 

The cut-and-dried interview of a decade 
ago is now dead, though not yet completely 
buried. This brand of dessicated goods 
nourished in its day and generation in the 
shape of formal question and answer— first a 
question by the reporter, next a reply by the 
victim, then another query, and so on, with 
mathematical regularity, to the end of the 
story. The reporter was usually given a list 
of questions to fire off, seriatim, at the victim 
. after the latter had been tracked to his lair. 
But this wooden and spiritless sort of pabu- 
lum no longer suits the tastes of readers and 
editors. The best writers of interviews now 
put their matter in much the same shape as 
that used by the popular novelist. What was 
formerly a dull broadside of set talk is spiced 
and enlivened by bits of description portray- 
ing the speaker as well as his ideas. Clever 
condensations of his words are made at points 
where he becomes too prolix, and droll side- 
observations are dropped in, while the mo- 
notonously recurring questions are often 
dropped out where the connection is clear 
without them. The result, when skillfully 
done, might easily be mistaken for a chapter 



INTER VIE WS AND NE WS. 71 

from a lively novel, while yet containing no 
fiction. 

The way this result is accomplished is 
simple, though not easy. The reporter meets 
his man, has a talk with him on the subjects- 
desired, and, instead of taking a verbatim 
record of every word he says, watches closely 
the spirit of what is said, the manner in which 
it is uttered, the pet phrases and notions of 
the speaker, and his personal appearance, 
jotting down his exact words only on vital or 
technical points. With this material mostly in 
his head he goes to his desk and writes the in- 
terview in the form of a story, alternating dia- 
logue with description and explanatory re- 
marks, so that the result is an article contain- 
ing the pith and point of what the man said, 
along with a series of bright, catchy word- 
pictures giving the reader a good idea of the 
manner of man that is talking. The differ- 
ence to the reader is that between a living, 
laughing man and a talking manikin. And, 
if conscientiously done \>j a writer who knows 
his busines , more than half the words credit- 
ed to the speaker may never have been uttered 
by him at all, and yet the report as a whole 
may be fairer to him and please him better 
than would a verbatim interview written after 
the old style. 

Interviewing is hard work. Ditch digging 
is a sinecure in comparison with it, while it 



72 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

lasts. To begin with, there is that trouble- 
some little ingredient that appears in the 
famous hare-pie recipe: first catch your man, 
and after that is accomplished it usually re- 
quires consummate tact to get him to talk on 
the right points, if, indeed, you can get him 
to talk at all. People to be interviewed are 
proverbially of three kinds — those who talk 
too much, those who talk too little, and those 
who will not talk at all. Amd after one does 
-get the man to talking it takes the concen- 
tration of all one's mental faculties to man- 
ipulate the output properly. You must not 
only pay the closest attention to what he is 
saying, grasp the points that he makes, take 
notes on the figures or statistics that he may 
quote, jot down verbatim some of his strik- 
ing sentences, and keep up your end of the 
conversation, but you must also bear in mind 
all the points on which your article is to 
touch and be thinking of the next question 
that you want to ask. You must do all your 
thinking now, for an afterthought when you 
get back to the office will avail nothing. And 
with all your care there will still lurk in the 
background the grim possibility that if you 
unwittingly misrepresent the man or "roast" 
him for his churlishness he may turn out to 
be a boon companion of the publisher's, in 
which case you will have to do some still 
harder interviewing among sundry city edit- 
ors on the subject of a new situation. 



INTER VIE WS AND NE IVS. 73 

While I was doing outside work I one day 
met a fellow reporter on a rival paper and we 
stopped a moment, after the manner of the 
craft, to swap news. 

"There isn't a vacant desk on your paper, 
is there?" suddenly inquired the young man. 

"Why, no; I thought you had a permanent 
place on the Post." 

"Left it for higher pay on the Globe" 

"Then, what's the matter with the Globe?" 

"Nothing," he replied, as he nervously 
scraped the gravel of the street with his toe, 
' 'only I was assigned yesterday to get an in- 
terview with a crusty old duffer on La Salle 
street and he cut me off so short that I went 
back to the office and wrote a 'roast' that did 
him to a crisp. The copy reader was in a 
hurry and let my stuff slide just as it was, and 
today I am looking for another job " 

"How is that?" 

"The old curmudgeon that I roasted was 
the chief stockholder of the Globe. ' ' 

When preparing to get an interview, be- 
fore approaching your man be sure you have 
clearly outlined in your mind just what ques- 
tions you want to ask him; you can't get any- 
thing worth having in this world without 
knowing exactly what you are after. Then, 
when your man begins to talk, impress his 
words carefully upon your mind, or rather 
his ideas; afterward, when you get to your 



74 STt rs IN TO JO URNAL ISM. 

desk, whether you took any pencil notes or 
not, you will find that you can reproduce the 
conversation almost word for word from 
memory. 

A good memory, by the way, is a prere- 
quisite to success in newspaper work more 
emphatically than in any other business. The 
mass of names, dates, stories, locations, wise 
sayings and historical rubbish of every de- 
scription that an editor or reporter acquires 
and must hold in his head is little short of ap- 
palling. A good memory carries with it a 
wonderful advantage. I happen to know a 
certain rawboned Irishman on a leading Chi- 
cago daily who can go to a meeting of the city 
council, talk with twenty different aldermen, 
and, without having taken a note, dictate to a 
stenographer column after column of inter- 
views, using almost the same words as those 
of the speakers, and never getting a state- 
ment credited to the wrong man. Naturally* 
he gets double the salary of an ordinary re- 
porter. 

There are two good ways in which to be. 
gin an interview article: either start with a 
brief paragraph of introduction giving the 
name of the speaker and locating the conver- 
sation in time and place, or begin with the 
speaker's most important sentence and then 
go on to state who said it and what was the 
occasion for the utterance. As you proceed 



INZER VIE WS A ND NE WS. 7 5 

iii the article take care not to be too rigidly 
verbatim. Wherever there is any part of the 
talk that' is dull or prolix give the pith of the 
matter in your own words and then drop into 
direct quotation again. Try to indicate, too, 
by a descriptive word or phrase dropped in 
here and there, the appearance, character 
and manner of the person who is talking. 

As to the notebook, use it or not, accord- 
ing to circumstances and the man you have to 
deal with. But the universal rule among 
newspaper men is, Keep your notebook and 
pencil in your pocket just as long as possible. 
The sight of these dread paraphernalia al- 
most always tends to silence the man or wo- 
man who is talking. The thought of going 
down verbatim in black and white scares the 
ordinary mortal — unless he happens to have 
something that he is anxious to have pub- 
lished, and then he will feel hurt if you don't 
at least pretend to take him down in short- 
hand. In the majority of cases, however, 
the effect will be to make the talker much 
less communicative, even though he under- 
stood from the first that you were a reporter; 
and there is always danger that the sight of 
the notebook will seal his mouth as tight as a 
clam at ebb tide. 

An important trick in interviewing is to 
be careful to catch any pet phrase, byword 
or stereotyped expression that the victim is 



76 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

in the unconscious habit of using, and to work 
this into the article once or twice. If you 
should get everything else .crooked and yet 
make this sound natural, everybody who 
knows the man, and even the man himself r 
will feel a lurking suspicion that you must b 
have taken the whole thing down in short- 
hand, word for word. 

The gathering of news items is only an- 
other form of interviewing, and is no less of 
an art. The poorest way in the world to get 
news out of a man is to go to him and ask 
"What's the news?" Any general question 
like this immediately renders the man's mind 
a blank. It demands the sweep of his thought 
over the whole ocean of his knowledge, and 
even if he be willing to make such an effort 
for your sake he is not likely, in the very na- 
ture of the case, to fish up the particular 
kind of material that you are after. Nine 
times in ten he will answer in the negative, 
blandly or otherwise, and turn to his work 
again. 

It is one of the fundamental principles of 
news gathering that the attention of the inter- 
viewed person must first be fixed and his 
thoughts be started to flowing in the channel 
that leads in the direction of the information 
you are after. There are at least two meth- 
ods of doing this. The usual way is to ask a 
pointed question bearing as directly as possi- 



INTER VIE WS AND NE WS. 77 

ble on the matter sought. The other, on 
which you can fall back if you have not data 
enough on the subject even to formulate a 
definite question, is to tell some news of the 
same kind as that which you are after. The 
law of association which largely governs the 
working of every mind will be very likely to 
suggest to your friend some similar bit of 
news, and when you get through you will 
have swapped your stock of news for his, and 
will probably be richer by several pages in 
your notebook. 

For instance: You are a society reporter,, 
and are in search of the current news about 
the goings and comings and doings of the 
people in your community. You call on Mrs. 
Smith, who usually knows all the society 
gossip within a mile of her, but who, never- 
theless, is not one of the kind who tells all 
she knows upon the slightest provocation. 
If you are shrewd you will at the first oppor- 
tunity steer the conversation in your direction 
by remarking: 

"Had you heard that Mr. Hyde and Miss. 
Jekyll are to be married next week?" 

"Yes," she may reply, "and so are Tommy 
Tompkins and Polly Hopkins." 

That is meat for you; and so you can keep 
the ball rolling and get the dear old lady to 
tell all she knows, and more, too. But even 
the most dubious of her gossip may be useful 



78 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

in furnishing you with a fund of questions 
with which to ply the next friend you meet. 

A regular reporter doing general assign- 
ments on a large city daily rarely has to go 
around hunting for items in the dark this 
way; he is usually given some definite subject 
and has categorical questions to ask. But 
even in metropolitan journalism there are 
certain of the "department" reporters, as 
they are called, who have more or less of 
this sort of work to do. The society editor, 
for example, must often resort to these meth- 
ods. The railroad and real estate depart- 
ment men have to visit the large offices in 
their lines of business and scare up what they 
can, much as they might flush a grouse if 
they were gunning for that kind of game in- 
stead of the other. Or, to change the figure, 
every reporter will find it of vital importance, 
times without number, to be acquainted with 
this art of fishing successfully without know- 
ing just where to cast one's hook. 

Even in assignment reporting, this law on 
mental association must constantly be kept 
in view. In short, a reporter must know all 
the kinks and idiosyncrasies of the human 
mind as he would know a book. There is no 
work in the whole field of mundane activity 
• that requires a more exhaustive knowledge of 
human nature than that of the reporter, and 
there is no school that can teach it more 



INTER VIE WS A ND NE JVS. 79 

quickly or accurately than actual reportorial 
work. 

The amount of this sort of knowledge 
stored up in an old newspaper man's brain is 
often a marvel. He knows men as an old 
violinist knows violins, and can play upon 
them as skillfully and as easily. He can tell 
just what cord to touch to bring out the in- 
formation he is after, and will often get it 
when his victim thinks he is keeping it the 
closest. He can tell almost at a glance what 
manner of man he is dealing with and whether 
to use soft words, a blunt, plain question, or 
a bold, threatening bluff. And he can almost 
invariably tell when a man or woman is try- 
ing to deceive him. I would rather take the 
judgment of two or three honest, experienced 
reporters on the guilt or innocence of a 
prisoner with whom they have talked than 
that of a dozen backwoods juries. 

To the reporter knowledge is power even 
more emphatically than to other people. And 
knowledge of men is the most valuable of all 
knowledges to him. In this statement is in- 
cluded acquaintance with people Scarcely 
anything is more valuable in newspaper work 
than a wide circle of acquaintance, especially 
among the men and women who are the chief 
actors of the community and are making its 
history. The reporter who is acquainted 
will, under ordinary circumstances, be twice 



80 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

as likely to get the information he is after as 
the one who goes to his man as a stranger; 
this is especially true if he is honest and 
honorable in his methods. It is therefore 
advisable to choose one city for your work 
and stick to it if possible. The reporter who 
knows the most people will, other things be- 
ing equal, get the highest wages. 

Since this is the case, the reporter must 
learn the names of the people he meets and 
be able to call the name when he sees the 
face. There are no two ways about it; it 
must be done, even if he has to put the names 
down in a book and study them like Greek. 
A poor memory for names — after all, what is 
it but a lack of attention ? A little concen- 
tration of mind on a name the first time it is 
heard will help wonderfully in recalling it the 
next time the face appears. Learning names 
is an accomplishment that can be acquired 
the same as any other mental tour deforce. 

In the popular mind the importance of a 
knowledge of shorthand in newspaper work 
is greatly overestimated. It is a convenience, 
not an essential — a luxury, not a necessity. 
In American journalism shorthand is distinct- 
ly of minor importance. The ever-repeated, 
constantly-increasing, inexorable demand for 
condensation in the city newspaper has al- 
most annihilated all the value that shorthand 
ever had for the all-around reporter. A ver- 



INTER VIE WS AND NE TVS.- 81 

batim speech is not only too long, but it is 
also too prosy for the hurrying, hand-to-mouth 
readers of today. Nine readers out of ten in 
the cities want entertainment more than ac- 
curacy of quotation. The salient points of 
each speech at a meeting must be picked out 
and woven into a bright, newsy narrative. 
Shorthand is often a hindrance rather than 
a help in this kind of work. Many city edit 
ors look with distinct disfavor upon a re- 
porter who names among his leading qualifi- 
cations the fact that he writes shorthand. It 
is dangerously easy for the shorthander to 
lose the spirit of a statement by sticking too 
close to the letter. 

If a bit of personal experience is pardon- 
able I may add that I use shorthand constant- 
ly in my own work and woutd not part with 
my knowledge of it for a great deal. Usually 
all the notes that I take could be taken in 
longhand; but stenography is so much swifter 
that it leaves me more time to listen and catch 
the drift of the speaker. Thus the science 
of pothooks if rightly used may obviate the 
very fault that is laid at its door. Stenog- 
raphy is a friend that can very easily lead 
the newspaper man into temptation, and yet, 
withal, is a valuable friend when rightly 
treated. I cannot entirely agree with the 
view of a very successful reporter who once 
made this radical assertion: 



82 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

"If you could make a swift shorthander 
of me by simply touching me with the end of 
your finger I would not let you touch me." 

"Why?" I asked. 

•'Because shorthand cripples the imagina- 
tion — a faculty as precious to the newspaper 
writer as to the novelist." 

This may be true or not, according to the 
individual under discussion, Let us give 
shorthand its due. In London it is almost 
an indispensable part of the reporter's equip- 
ment. And with the amanuensis and court 
reporter we all know that it is worth more 
than the knowledge of any foreign language. 
It has quintupled the letter-writing power of 
every able business man; but in the news- 
paper work, while it has its uses, it will 
hardly pay the all-around reporter for the 
labor necessary to learn it. 

But the typewriter— that is another story. 
This wonderful and useful machine is fast 
becoming as indispensable to the writer as 
the pen itself. Many of our best editorial 
writers, to say nothing of magazine contribu- 
tors and novelists, now compose entirely on 
the typewriter. The Washington Star has 
recently put a machine on the desk of each of 
its reporters and claims to require every line 
ol its copy to be written on a typewriter. 
The reporter or editor of the future will 
undoubtedly have to be a typewritist if he 
wants to keep up with the procession. 



INTER VIE WS A ND NE WS. 83 

The two chief points of advantage in the 
use of the typewriter are legibility and time. 
To the beginner the former is the more im- 
portant, but in the long ran the saving of 
time far outweighs even that in value. Any 
newspaper man will tell you that an article 
from a stranger will stand at least twice as 
good a chance of acceptance if it is typewrit- 
ten. Indeed, some magazines refuse to con- 
sider an article unless it is in this form. The 
editor can see at a glance what is in such a 
manuscript and can grasp its good points at 
once, if it has any. The contributor at least 
gets a hearing, and that means a great deal. 
As articles by the beginner are nearly always 
submitted "on space'' — that is, are paid for 
according to the amount used and the space 
filled — the moral is obvious: have your mat- 
ter typewritten if the means are within your 
reach; otherwise make your writing as nearly 
as possible like print in legibility and let it 
go at that. 

There is a saying, "Once a reporter, al- 
ways a reporter," and there is a grain of 
truth in the epigram. The constant excite - 
inert of the life seems to act on certain tem- 
peraments like an intoxicating drink; they get 
what might be called the reporting habit, 
and are not happy unless they have their 
daily dram of excitement. Any other mode 
of existence becomes unutterably dull in their 



84 ^ TEPS INTO JO URNALISM. 

eyes; and with it all, unless a man has high 
aims and .considerable self-control, he is liable 
to acquire vicious methods of recreation and 
fall into an artificial habit of life and thought. 
For the mediocre mind the proverb is to a 
degree true, but for the ambitious young man 
or woman working for the future as well as 
for the present it is not true, as hundreds of 
illustrious examples will attest. 

But if it is public distinction that the 
young aspirant is after, let him not make the 
fatal mistake of burying his shining personal- 
ity in a newspaper office. Anonymity is one of 
the foundation stones of Amierican journalism. 
One reporter among a thousand, perhaps, be- 
comes by overshadowing ability or favoring 
circumstances so prominent in his profession 
that he is able after a while to branch out for 
himself and write over his own & immature, 
like George Alfred Townsend or Archibald 
Forbes, or Rudyard Kipling. But the great 
rank and file of the newspaper fraternity, 
brilliant as well as mediocre, are known all 
their lives to their readers as "the Times re 
porter," "the Herald editor," etc., and even 
if they rise to the managing editorship of 
their papers thej^ are scarcely known byname 
outside their own office doors. So, a sensible 
newspaper man, in giving advice tc begin- 
ners, says: 

"Banish from your heads at once an non- 



INTER VIE WS AND NE WS. 85 

sense about becoming celebrated. Be content 
with distinction in your own office. Be re- 
nowned within its walls for industry, accu- 
racy, speed and good copy. If you must 
have a wider celebrity than that you would 
better seek it in some other field." 



HOW TO GET A START. 

One may study newspaper reporting, 
proof-reading, editing, and all the other 
branches of the journalistic profession, from 
books or under instructors, but, after all, by 
far the best school is the newspaper office 
itself. There is no outside instruction that can 
equal the actual work, with its accompanying 
responsibility to rub it in, and there never 
can be. We learn to do by doing. A begin- 
ner will learn more in three months of practi- 
cal work than in a year of school- room study 
on the subject. No amount of advice or the- 
oretical study can ever teach the art of re- 
porting as can the grim training of the local 
room of a driving metropolitan daily. 

Not that I mean to say a word against 
schools of journalism or against journalistic 
courses in colleges, for I believe that such in- 
stitutions can do much in preparing students 
to be intelligent learners after their real ap- 
prenticeship begins on a newspaper staff. 
There is no reason why there should not be 
successful schools of journalism, just as well 
as theological seminaries and law schools. 
The old notion, that the journalist is bom 



HO W TO GET A STAR T. 87 

and not made, is true, as far as the same sen- 
timent is true when applied to preachers and 
lawyers, and no farther The time will un- 
doubtedly come when there will be successful 
schools of journalism in which the methods- 
and practice of preparing copy will be taught;, 
but thus far there is nothing of the sort that 
is not as yet merely an experiment. 

Meanwhile, the troublesome fact that. 
stares the ambitious would-be journalist in 
the face is that the city editor wants only 
practiced reporters who know the business 
and know it thoroughly. He would not have 
the services of a green hand bestowed gratis. 
He has no time to waste in teaching a novice, 
and no desire to employ a man or woman on 
whom he cannot depend in an emergency. 
Even the desk men of the editorial staff must 
not be above rushing out to get an interview 
if an emergency demands it. A newspaper is 
like a vessel bound on a long voyage: it can- 
not afford to carry any but expert sailors;, 
every man, from captain to scullion, must be 
able to reef the main topsl in a storm. Thus 
it comes about that the practiced newspaper 
writer usually has no trouble in finding a po- 
sition, and even the dissipated bohemian, no 
matter how often he falls, can manage to 
alight on his feet, while, unfortunately, the 
ambitious beginner, be he never so anxious 
to work, and work hard, cannot get anywhere 



88 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

within hailing distance of the charmed circle. 
It is another hickory -limb case — you have to 
learn to swim without going near the water. 

The great problem for the beginner is to 
get a start. The only advice we can get 
when we ask our newspaper friends how to 
enter their profession is, "Don't." Most of 
us have no friend at the head of a big news- 
paper who is willing to put a beginner — 
though a college graduate — upon his staff as 
an apprentice and initiate him into the mys- 
teries of the guild. The best lessons must 
he learned, therefore, not in the best school, 
but in the best available school. And these 
preliminary lessons, as any old editor can tes- 
tify, are always hard and often utterly dis- 
couraging. But this is the very reason why 
the beginner should not be discouraged when 
passing through this trying period. 

Under existing conditions the would be 
wielder of the pen must make a start for him- 
self. You must get hold somewhere, though 
it be on the humblest country weekly in a 
backwoods town. You must begin writing 
and submitting manuscript to the most avail- 
able papers in neighboring towns or cities, 
time after time, in spite of failure and disap- 
pointment, until you get a foothold some- 
where. Then, when you have begun to get 
your articles into print, study the alterations 
that the editor has made in your matter; 



HOW TO GET A START. 89 

note the nature of the parts that he has cut 
•out, and the words that he has changed, and 
avoid in the future the things which his judg- 
ment has condemned. Keep everlastingly at 
it; perseverance is bound to bring some de- 
gree of success; whether you ever reach the 
top depends upon two things, and one of 
these is persevering industry; the other is 
natural ability, and neither you nor anybody 
•else can tell whether you have this until you 
have tried and failed many times It is safe 
to say, however, that if you are unwilling go 
labor and wait long enough to carry you 
through this slough of despond your literary 
inspiration would hardly be sufficient to carry 
you over all the rest of the stony way that 
lies between you and the shining glory shore 
of the coveted Beulah Land for which you 
have set out. 

If a beginner has once gotten even" the 
humblest start and has the divine call, in the 
shape of unquestionable ability, he will sooner 
or later find openings for better things ahead; 
there is always room in the omnibus of jour- 
nalism for one more bright young writer. 

"But why not try to write for a magazine 
while I am about it, instead of wasting my 
time on the ephemeridas of the daily press?" 
asks an ambitious beginner. 

Because the best mountain climbers have 
found it advisable to scale the foothills be- 



90 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

fore trying to reach the summit of the main 
peak. If you are a young man or woman 
starting out with a determination to make a 
livelihood by the use of the pen — a very fool- 
hardy determination, by the way — my advice 
is, let the magazine alone at first. Newspaper 
work is surer and far more remunerative 
for the beginner. It is true that the two 
styles of writing are quite different, and that 
the way through journalism does not always 
lead to the more permanent styles of writing. 
But newspaper work may legitimately be 
made the first step in a literary life, if prop- 
erly managed; it is not so high in its require- 
ments as that necessary on a magazine, but 
for that very reason it gives a better chance 
to the inexperienced. And even in this day 
of magazines the field for that kind of writing 
is comparatively limited, and is so hedged 
with limitations and requirements which the 
beginner can scarcely understand, that the 
chance is slim for anyone without a reputation 
to get his foot inside the charmed enclosure. 
Besides, even the best of magazine writers 
rarely get a compensation worthy of the care 
ful and painstaking work that they do. Maga- 
zine writing advertises their names and helps 
them if they expect to become authors of 
books, as most of them do; it is all right as a 
staff, but very unsafe as a crutch upon which 
to lean; it is good for making pocket money 



HOW TO GET A START. 91 

on the side, and perhaps a reputation, but as 
a source of bread and butter the great major 
ity of people have found it painfully precari- 
ous. 

Time was when this was also true of the 
newspaper business, as a glance through the 
annals of London's famous Fleet street, with its 
starving penny-a-liners, will show. But that 
time is past; the news of the day is no longer 
a luxury with the common people, but a ne- 
cessity, and the journalistic profession has 
become not only honorable but also fairly re- 
munerative.* 

There are a fe vv comparatively large prizes 
in the shape of 110,000 or $15,000 salaries, but 
these pertain to the chief editorial chairs of . 
only a dozen among the 21,000 periodicals 
printed in the United States. Thus, while 
there is no calling that offers quicker returns 
in a moderate way to a bright and prolific 
writer, than journalism, its large salaries are 
few and far between, and those who are striv- 



a *The average salaries of reporters in Chicago is $21 or $22 a week ; 
that of local copy-readers, $25 to $30; of sub-editors, $30 to $40; edi- 
torial writers get from $40 to $50 a week, and city editors about the 
same. Managing editors get from $50 to $75 a week in Chicago, and 
double those amounts in New York . The manager of the Associated 
Press receives $15,000 a year. John A. Cockerill is said to have 
drawn the same salary as managing editor of the New York World; 
and George W. Turner is said to have gotten $20,000 a year in the 
same position. According to a recent newspaper item, "William C. 
Rieck is paid $15,000 as managing editor of the New York Herald 
and George H. Hepworth gets $12, coo as leading editorial writer on 
the same paper. 



92 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

ing after the prizes are legion. This super- 
fluity of aspirants, coupled with the constant 
temptation to live extravagantly, will account 
in part for the fact that the generality of 
newspaper workers find themselves at the end 
of twenty years, financially, about where they 
were when they started. There are today in 
New York 2,000 newspaper slaves who aver- 
age |25 a week, while there are less than two 
score who earn over $100 a week. News- 
papers are like bookstores: their work is con- 
sidered so genteel that they are always over- 
run with applicants who want to try their 
hands at the work regardless of wages or 
qualifications. The only valid excuses for a 
young man's entering journalism are an over- 
powering desire to write and a natural ability 
to do that better than he can do anything 
else. For such there is always room. 

Should a newspaper writer have a college 
education? Not necessarily, especially if he 
is an indefatigable reader of good books. 
But it is far more necessary now than in the 
days when Horace Greeley mocked at the col- 
lege graduate. The time has gone by for any 
one to despise a liberal education — and the 
reporter, of all men, is the one who will find 
every kind of knowledge of some value. But 
there is a certain editorial ability, facility, 
and force, that can be acquired only by practice 
in a newspaper office. No school cr college 



HOW TO GET A START. 93 

can ever teach it. Even the college graduate 
must spend years afterward in acquiring it. 
In the acquisition of this power the boy who 
dispenses with the college and goes directly 
to reporting gets far ahead. But when a. 
young editor has this practical knack, and yet 
has under it the broad basis of a general edu- 
cation, in history, political economy, Ameri- 
can politics, and classical and polite litera- 
ture, he has an immense advantage and can 
soon outstride the rival who has merely the 
practical experience. 

A collegiate education can be easily over- 
estimated, and it usually is by those who lack 
it But the young writer who has a chance- 
to get it and neglects to do so is extremely 
foolish. He is deliberately choosing a more 
contracted horizon where he might have a 
broader, and tethering himself with a shorter 
cord when he might have the longer. He 
may not notice the difference for a time, but 
in the coming days, when, if he is ambitious, 
as he ought to be, he will have a weather eye 
out for an editorial chair to fill, he will wish 
with all his heart for a wider and deeper fund, 
of knowledge. 

The great majority of editors are those 
men who have graduated from the reporter's, 
desk as well as from college. The best re- 
porter does not always make the best editor, 
but the same strength of mind and breadth of 



94 STh PS INTO JOURNALISM. 

knowledge that have made a good reporter 
will always help to make a good editor, 
and especially so, if the man who has learned 
to be a student and to think more than he 
says. 

The trouble with the book student is that 
when he goes to writing he turns out essays. 
Now, essays are not among the various and 
sundry things which the newspaper editor 
considers "good stuff," and there is likely to 
be some heart-burning before the contributor 
gets that fact thoroughly into his cranium. 
But when the would-be literary person has 
finally n ade the discovery that a newspaper 
will not print even the most brilliant essay 
on "Artaxerxes." or "The Pharaohs of 
Egypt," or "The Innateness of Religiosity," 
the next idea that seizes him is to send the 
news from his own town to some large city 
paper. This is a good deal more sensible, 
lor every paper, however poor or stingy, 
always wants a good piece of news and will 
pay an outsider for it if it is not already 
covered. But even this moderate height of 
journalistic activity is not to be attained at 
a single bound, and may be as difficult as 
the other if not gone at in the right way. 

Journalism, like charity and missionary 
work, should if possible begin at home. The 
best way to get a position as a correspondent 
for a city paper is first to get a place on the 



HOW TO GET A START. 101 

crowded with matter; consequently the be- 
lated news is usually cut down, condensed, 
or thrown bodily on the floor. Early news 
goes into type at once, and after that it stands 
ten times more chance of being printed and 
paid for than if it had come in at the eleventh 
hour. 

"But my editor has ordered 500 words," 
you say; "he won't throw my stuff on the 
floor." 

Don't deceive yourself. If your 500 words 
come in late only 200 or 300 of them will be 
likely to go into print, and that is all that 
you will be able to get pay for; furthermore, 
if the article is not written so that it can be 
condensed by merely dropping off the last 
part, you may look in vain for so much as a 
stickful of it when the paper comes out — un- 
less the matter was of extraordinary import- 
ance. 

If a young reporter can once become thor- 
oughly impressed with the overshadowing 
importance of this one idea,- the value of 
time, he has taken a long step towards suc- 
cess and promotion. 

The question of how to begin a telegraphic 
news story is only less important than that 
of promptness. The principles are the same 
as those laid down for the reporter in the 
local room, but they are so important that 
they will bear repeating several times. Be- 



102 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

gin with the most striking fact in the whole 
story. Make the first two or three sentences 
tell the whole in a nutshell Then begin a 
new paragraph and start in on the details, 
enlarging on the subject as much as neces- 
sary to fill the limit of words allowed you. 
Don't use a useless word; yet do not skeleton- 
ize anything sent for publication — that is, do 
not drop out the little words, "the," "of," 
and the rest, but write the story just as it is 
to be printed. Very few papers nowadays 
want their telegraphic matter skeletonized; 
the money saved in the telegraph bill is more 
than lost in the time spent by the copy reader 
in filling out the missing words. And don't 
get in any spread-eagle adjectives or involved 
rhetoric or high-sounding phrases which the 
occasion does not warrant. You will only 
get the copy reader's execrations on your 
head when he cuts them out. Use short 
sentences, short words and simple construc- 
tions; these are always the stronger. 

Such an article will be easily handled by 
the telegraph editor; he will have no trouble 
in trimming it down or expanding it to suit 
the space at his command. He will like to 
receive your stuff, and you will in consequence 
have more orders than otherwise. When 
some event worth a two-column article occurs 
the managing editor will give you the assign- 
ment instead of sending a special staff re- 



HOW TO GET A START. 103 

porter from the office to do it; so that when 
you send in your "string*" to be cashed at the 
end of the month it will be a good deal longer 
than that of your rival who does not know 
these small but important points. 

In sending news by wire, begin with the 
date line, as provided for in the blanks fur- 
nished a,t the telegraph office, and in using the 
words "yesterday," "today," etc., always ap- 
ply them with reference to the date under 
which you are writing. Newspapers do not 
use the year in their date lines. Follow with 
your story, without preliminary or heading 
of any kind, sign your full name at the end, 
and on the bottom of the last sheet do not fail 
to write, "Filed 4:30 p. m.," or whatever the 
hour and minute may be when you hand the 
message to the operator. Both the prelimi- 
nary query and the dispatch itself are sent 
"collect," that is, they are paid for by the pa- 
per. All newspapers have special rates with 
the telegraphic companies, making the cost 
of service considerably less than in the case 
of ordinary individuals. 

A country correspondent is especially in 
need of some means of rapid transit. He 

*It is the custom on most papers for "space" writers to clip out of 
a copy of the sheet each day the matter they have written, and to 
paste these bits of paper in a long continuous strip which is meas- 
ured with a column rule and paid for by the number of columns it 
contains. L,ike printers, who do the same with duplicate proofs of 
the type they have set, editors technically term this a "string." 



104 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

ought to have a horse or bicycle, for when an 
important event occurs in his territory he 
must "get there" at once. "Get the news at 
nny cost," is practically the motto of all the 
leading journals. The city reporter's ex- 
pense account for cab and carriage hire often 
amounts to almost as much as his salary. 
Any good paper will cheerfully pay a coun- 
try correspondent's expenses, provided only 
that he gets the news and gets it quickly. 

Report facts. Stick to the truth. Keep 
your promises. I know that it seems to be 
flying in the face of the profession to give 
advice like this. But it is sound advice and 
will lead to the greatest success in the end, 
though sharp reporters may sneer and tell 
you otherwise. It pays to state facts, be- 
cause they are more stubborn than the stub- 
bornest kicker; everybody must agree with 
them whether he wants to or not. And it 
pays, too, to keep promises. I once asked 
one of the most successful editors in Chicago 
what would be the first advice he would give 
a beginner in journalism. "I would tell him 
never to violate a promise," was the reply. 
A newspaper man is often placed in such a 
position that he can get valuable information 
by promising not to use it until some future 
time or under certain conditions. There are 
men who consider it smart and enterprising 
to get news in that way and then laugh in the 



HOW TO GET A START. 105 

face of the person who gave it and print it in 
their next issue. This may be clever accord- 
ing to some peop]e's standards, but it is de- 
cidedly short-sighted and the worst kind of 
policy, from a merely business standpoint. 

To sum up the chief points which the re- 
porter must watch: Be quick in sending 
your news, for news, like buckwheat cakes, 
is not good for much after it gets cold. 
Write your best point first, so that it will 
strike the eye and make the reader look at it. 
Be clear, or you will never be anything. 
Learn to be brief first, and there will be 
plenty of time to learn the art of writing 
against space afterward. Never let anybody 
"scoop" you. Be sure of your facts before 
you write anything derogatory to a man's or 
woman's character, for a libel suit against the 
paper may mean good-by to your reportorial 
head. Don't editorialize — that is, don't color 
your statements even with an adjective or an 
adverb that will signify your personal opin- 
ion of the merits of a disputed case, unless 
you have proofs on which to base such an 
opinion, and then give the proofs and leave 
the opinion out. 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. 

Editorial work is radically different from 
reportorial work. In some respects editing 
is the opposite of reporting, for its essential 
element is criticism and repression, while 
that of reporting is production and the repre- 
sentation of things as they are, not as they 
ought to be. 

An editor's work may be of two kinds: 
either corrective or productive — correct- 
ing other writers' copy or writing original 
comments or opinions, called editorials. 
There is no fixed system of promotion from 
one position to another in a newspaper office, 
but it is most usual for a reporter to get a 
start in desk work, as the editorial function 
is modestly termed, by being made a copy 
reader. In this case, instead of being given 
an assignment and being sent out to write 
something, he remains in the office and reads 
over the copy submitted by the other mem- 
bers of the staff, blue pencil in hand, rewrit- 
ing, cutting down, amplifying and polishing, 
becoming thereby jointly responsible with 
the reporter for the correctness of the article 
and taking almost the entire responsibility 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. Ill 

write it. Such places are usually intrusted 
only to men or women of long experience in 
newspaper work who have developed a special 
aptitude for that particular kind of writing. 

As the obtainment of a position in any of 
these special tields almost of necessity re- 
quires a preliminary apprenticeship at gener- 
al reporting, it will not be profitable for the 
beginner to go any deeper into their methods 
at present. 

And now we come to the writing of edi- 
torials — the productive work pure and simple, 
as distinguished from the work of copy read- 
ing. The editorial writers are, next to the 
managing editor, the editor-in-chief, and per- 
haps the city editor, the best paid men on the 
newspaper staff. Their salaries range from 
$10,000 a year on certain large New York 
dailies down to jp 1,500 or $2,000 on the news- 
papers of the smaller cities. 

The editorial writers are under the direct 
control of the editor-in-chief, who usually 
writes upon the most important question of 
the day himself, and who has the final and 
authoritative say as to how a topic is to be 
handled. The way he decides this is usually 
not by assigning subjects to t± various 
writers and indicating how the top. are to 
be treated, but by allowing each editorial 
writer as far as possible to choose his own 
subjects, treat them as he thinks best, and 



112 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

hand the article in to the editor-in-chief, who 
thus becomes in his turn a copy reader. The 
fate of each article depends upon whether 
the expression of opinion contained in it coin- 
cides with the ideas of the chief and with the 
policy of the paper. If it does not, it is re- 
vised or thrown into the wastebasket, ac- 
cording to the circumstances, the same as the 
stuff of the poorest-paid country correspond- 
ent. Whether or not a man's article is print- 
ed makes no immediate difference in his sal- 
ary, but as nobody enjoys writing for the 
wastebasket a new writer soon gets the mo- 
tion of the journalistic ship and attacks only 
those subjects which he can swing acceptably 
to the chief pilot; or, if he fails to get his sea 
legs after a reasonable time, he is summarily 
dropped overboard. 

An editorial article, according to the pres- 
ent accepted meaning of the term, is a criti- 
cal interpretation of events. It takes up the 
more important topics of news and philoso- 
phizes upon them — that is, attempts to point 
out the relation of isolated facts to each other 
and to general systems. It goes beneath the 
surface of things and seeks for causes, effects 
and remedies. In this aspect M. Blowitz's 
dictum is probably true: "One good com- 
ment is worth ten informations." The edito- 
rial opinion of a well -trained mind is to news 
matter what the finished linen is to the raw 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. 113 

flax. But the trouble is that one man wants 
his raw material woven into a free trade 
editorial and another wants a protective tariff 
product; one wants liberalism and another 
orthodoxy, while — and this is another but 
important aspect of the subject— the great 
majority want nothing but superficiality and 
mere amusement. This is why the editorial 
at present is tending to deteriorate into flip- 
pancy or to disappear entirely. 

The best model of the editorial combines 
a brief restatement of the news involved, 
with clear-cut comment thereon, made from 
the point of view of the editor. An editorial 
may also sometimes consist almost entirely 
of a resume of some news matter that has 
appeared piecemeal in the telegraphic or 
local columns day by day; in fact, many 
people read the editorial page mostly for the 
condensations of news found there. But the 
essence of the editorial, after all, is the com- 
ment contained in it. This is the official 
opinion of the paper, and is a thing separate 
and apart from the news columns, which 
latter, it is generally agreed among editors, 
should be as free from coloring or bias of 
opinion as possible. 

The writing of the best class of editorials 
requires ripe judgment and a wide range of 
knowledge, especially in contemporaneous 
political and social history. No beginner, be 



114 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

lie college graduate or not, need aspire to 
this position of journalistic generalship with- 
out having served his time first in the ranks. 

In conclusion, a word on book reviewing: 
The book review is essentially an editorial. 
This fact alone may serve to explain to many 
aspiring literary novices why their proffered 
services as book critics are rejected by news- 
papers. The ripeness of the judgment ex- 
pressed in a book review is at least half its 
value; the other half lies in the skillful sum- 
ming up of the author's ideas or story in such 
a way that the reader of an article shall 
practically get all that is best in the book. 
As in the editorial, it is a mingling of news 
and comment. Not that the criticism need 
take up anything like half the space in the 
article; on the contrary, the best literary 
critics are those who, like Mr. Haseltine of 
the New T York Stm, confine their expressions 
of opinion to a few incidental adjectives or 
adverbs and give all the rest of their space 
to retelling in brief what the author has told 
at length. But the few words of comment 
which they use are the right words, and there 
is, besides, a world of comment in their selec- 
tion of material and indeed in the mere choice 
of books about which to write. 

It is perhaps not so necessary that the 
aspirant to a position as literary editor should 
go through the usual reportorial training, 



EDITORIAL- ROOM METHODS. 115 

but the way of approach from without is 
rather more difficult, and the preliminary 
drill must certainly be no less exacting of its 
kind. To the man or woman who is bent on 
doing this kind of work I would first vouch- 
safe the information that, though the occupa- 
tion is clean and attractive, the pay is usually 
comparatively meager because there are so 
many who are seeking after that genteel kind 
of work. If money is your object, you had 
better be a "hog editor" than a "book 
editor." 

If the aspirant still remains obdurate, I 
would advise him to begin, on his own hook, 
reading books — good old standard works for 
the most part — and writing a review of each, 
modeled after the style of some good critic, 
but entirely original in the opinions ex- 
pressed. Let the aspirant set down exactly his 
private opinion of the book, especially seek- 
ing out the weak points, for these are most 
apt to escape him and are, moreover, usually 
considered the best "stuff" in the newspaper 
office, though the editors will not tell you so. 
After you have written two or three dozen 
such articles in the seclusion of your own 
room, not before, you may venture to seek 
out the literary editor of some paper and 
show him a sample or two of your work and 
ask for the privilege of writing for his 
columns a review of some book that he has 



116 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

on hand, expecting therefore no pay except 
the copy of the book reviewed. The getting 
of this privilege, if you have no acquaintance 
with any one on the staff, will probably be no 
easy task; but, unfortunately, the guide to 
the path of newspaper life, like the preacher, 
must leave each pilgrim to cross the darkest 
stream alone, trusting only in that inspired 
text, "Where there's a will there's a way." 

This completes the outline of the work 
done by the editorial staff of a paper, so far 
as it will be profitable for the beginner to 
investigate it. Dramatic criticism is similar 
to literary criticism, but is still more the 
work of a specialist. Financial and commer- 
cial writing, too, are special branches that 
are best approached by the reportorial route. 
The woman's department will be treated in a 
separate chapter hereafter. 

This, then, is the great intellectual ma- 
chine called the editorial force. The editor- 
in-chief, who stands at the head, sets the 
pace, not only for the editorial columns, but 
for the whole paper, and his work is for the 
most part confined to editing editorial utter- 
ances and indicating by suggestions and crit- 
icisms the lines to be followed by his lieuten- 
ant, the managing editor. The latter, who is 
second in authority and in size of salary, 
keeps the city editor, the telegraph man, the 
exchange reader and the more important of 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. 117 

the department men straight by maintaining 
a close watch over their work as it appears 
in the paper each day and reprimanding them 
for anything that does not meet his approval. 
In important cases he may look over their 
proofs and make changes that he deems nec- 
essary, but usually he shapes the course of 
the sub-editors by simply telling them what 
they ought not to have done and warning 
them not to let it occur again. Words of 
praise are few and far between; if a sub-edi- 
tor hears no adverse criticism from his supe- 
rior he may rest pretty well assured that he 
is giving excellent satisfaction. 

The methods and the work of the various 
editors and sub-editors will differ according 
to the temperament and ability of each, but 
there are certain bounds beyond which they 
may not go and certain unpardonable mis- 
takes which, though made but once, will 
mean discharge. To be scooped is probably 
the most heinous on the list; it is almost al- 
ways an unpardonable sin, punishable by 
swift official death.* 



*In the summer of 1893 a certain important bank failed in New- 
York. The dispatch reached the Chicago papers late. The tele- 
graph editor of the Tribune glanced over it and through some inad. 
%'ertency failed to notice the importance of the news as affecting 
Chicago; he accordingly cut the dispatch down to two stickfuls and 
rati it into the paper under an ordinary two-line head. Every other 
paper had a column of it, with a slug head, as it deserved. That 
one error caused the immediate discharge of three men from the 
ttlegraph room. 



118 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. < 

And he who errs at the other extreme 
meets no better fate, as the following anec- 
dote will show. Whenever a prominent man 
or woman is lying at the point of death the 
larger papers keep in type an obituary article 
ready to use the moment the telegraph an- 
nounces that the end has come. A few years 
ago, when Harriet Beecher Stowe was not 
expected to live, a prominent Chicago morn- 
ing paper had such a post-mortem story on 
the standing galley ready for an emergency. 
By some unaccountable misunderstanding the 
night editor dumped it into the forms, and 
the next morning the world was informed 
with touching pathos of the great woman's 
death. Mrs. Stowe, as you are aware, is 
still living. The night editor who committed 
this unwitting deed of woman slaughter was 
one of the most careful and able newspaper 
men in Chicago, and is now getting $7,500 a 
year as managing news editor of a New York 
daily. But his talent did not save his head 
from dropping into ihe basket bright and 
early on that funereal morning. . 

There are two suggestive reflections that 
may properly be indulged in at this point. 
One is that the hired editor's tenure of office, 
even at best, is a very precarious thing. The 
other is that if he is really a good man he 
rarely has difficulty, when one publisher "lets 
him go," in finding another place. 



EDITORIAL ROOM METHODS. 119 

There are a thousand little devices which 
the desk editor, as well as the successful 
writer, must know, for serving up matter in 
readable shape. They might almost be called 
tricks of the profession. When viewed sepa- 
rately they seem rather trilling, but they are, 
none the less, when taken all together, very 
important. And they are points, too, which 
it is almost impossible to pick up anywhere 
except in the newspaper office and by actual 
practice. Take, for instance, the various 
means used to break up the monotony of the 
printed column and give the matter a bright 
and interesting look. 

A newspaper writer who knows his busi- 
ness will take a prosy, forbidding article sug- 
gestive of encyclopedias and delinquent tax 
notices, and, if it has any material in it worth 
publishing at all, will make the most inter- 
esting and breezy kind of story of it. First 
of all, he will lighten its general appearance 
to the eye by a judicious breaking up into 
paragraphs. Some of the plain statements 
he may expand into a bit of dialogue, making 
the speakers tell the story in their questions 
and answers. Any attempt at flowery rhetoric 
or any superfluous words will fall at the first 
touch of his ruthless blue pencil. He will 
drop in a question here, an exclamation there, 
and a touch of brogue, perhaps, where the 
circumstances warrant it. ; A sentence will 



120 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

sometimes be inverted in its construction by 
way of variety; a short sentence will be 
dropped deftly in between two long ones; or 
part of the story may be put into the mouth 
of an imaginary neighbor, to shift the re- 
sponsibility of the statement or throw the 
idea into more striking relief. 

The writer of any kind ought to have the 
materials for his article in his hands, or, 
rather, in his head, before he begins to write. 
But in daily newspaper work the time at one's 
disposal is so limited that it is often impossible 
to get the minor facts with which to deck out 
the main idea contained in some important 
but meager news bulletin. In order to make 
an article out of the bare announcement at 
hand the editor must supply the missing de- 
tails from his imagination. To use the tech- 
nical term, it becomes necessary to "fake" 
more or less in order to make a fit setting in 
which to display the nugget of news as it de- 
serves. No doubt many people will hold up 
their hands in horror at the idea that any 
man, especially one who believes in the high 
mission of the press, should make a confes- 
sion like this, without a blush. Yet to this 
has newsp iper ethics come. 

So eager is the public for news, and so hot 
is the competition among publishers, that 
many an event has to be written up in the 
past tense before it has actually occurred, be- 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. 121 

cause it will be over when the paper appears 
and the people will look for it in the paper. 
The uninitiated seem utterly oblivious to the 
fact that it takes time to write, edit, set in 
type, stereotype and print an item of news. 
Hardly a day passes in the office of a city 
evening paper that some one does not come 
in about ten minutes before 5 o'clock with an 
item about Sally Jones's new baby, or some- 
thing equally startling, and ask to have it 
printed in the 5 o'clock edition. When the 
office boy or the editor gently breaks the 
truth to such visitors-^that the 5 o'clock edi- 
tion went to press just two hours ago — they 
are prone to shake the dust of the office from 
their feet with an injured, you-know-you're- 
lying look on their incredulous brows. Yet 
they have been told the exact truth. 

So, if an event occurs or a lecture is given 
as much as five minutes before press time the 
paper must contain a report of it Here is 
where the highly developed imagination of 
the reporter is called into play. He has to 
imagine the wedding or the ball as it will 
probably appear, and describe the scene as 
lie sees it in his mind's eye; or, if it is a lec- 
ture, he must get a peep at the speaker's 
manuscript beforehand and report the speech 
as if he had heard it delivered. So skillful 
does he become at this sort of thing that even 
those who have witnessed the actual event 



122 S TEPS IN TO JO URNALISM. 

usually cannot detect the fact that the writer 
did not compose the article on the spot. 

This rather doubtful fin-dii-siede sort of 
journalism is perhaps excusable as long as 
the imaginative writing is confined to non- 
essentials and is done by one who has in him 
at least the desire to represent the truth. 
Readers may settle the ethical part of the 
question for themselves;, the fact remains 
that all newspapers employ this method more 
or less, usually keeping their forms open as 
long as possible so as to make changes when 
the accomplished f acts* are found at the last 
moment not to tally with the forecast that is 
in type. It is equally true that he who wields 
the "fake," even in this mild form, is toying 
with an edged tool that is likely, sooner or 
later, to wound fatally even the most skillful 
operator. 

One November the astronomers announced 
that there would be a meteoric shower of un- 
usual brilliancy on a certain night. An en- 
terprising editor put into type beforehand an 
elaborate article describing just how the 
heavens looked from certain housetops in the 
city, and arranged to print it in the paper of 
the following morning. The time came for 
going to press, and, alas! the whole night 
had been cloudy. In vain he waited and 
strained his eyes at the sanctum window to 
catch even the glimmer of a meteor. At last 
he did not dare to delay the press a minute 



EDITORIAL-ROOM METHODS. 123 

longer; there was still a chance that the 
clouds might break before morning, and then 
nobody would know the difference. The ar- 
ticle was allowed to run. It rained pitchforks 
all the rest of the night, but so far as the 
world knew it rained no stars. The paper 
was the laughing stock of the city the next 
morning, and the enterprising editor had no 
need that day to feel of his neck to see whether 
his head was on, for it wasn't. 

In spite of the fact that editors come to 
grief once in a while by its use, this trick of 
drawing upon the imagination for the non- 
essential parts of an article is certainly one 
of the most valuable secrets of the profession 
at its present stage of development. Truth 
in essentials, imagination in non-essentials, is 
considered a legitimate rule of action in every 
office. The paramount object is to make an 
interesting story. If the number of copies 
sold is any criterion, the people prefer this 
sort of journalism to one that is rigidly accu- 
rate. Of course, if the reporter has been on 
the ground and has the minutiae of the cir- 
cumstances surrounding the event, he had 
better draw upon them for his garnishings, 
though even then he can easily fall into the 
dull and prosy error of being tiresomely ex- 
act about little things like the minutes and 
seconds or the state of the atmosphere or the 
precise words of the speaker. A newspaper 
is not a mathematical treatise. 



WRITING A SPECIAL 

* 'Special stories" play an important part 
in modern journalism. The typical "special" 
is a long article making some pretentions to 
exhaustiveness and combining the three 
styles of matter of which a newspaper is com- 
posed — news, editorial comment and general 
reading matter. But a special may be con- 
fined to any two or to any one of these ele- 
ments. It may be simply a mass of new and 
interesting facts on a given subject, or it may 
be merely an overgrown editorial, or finally 
it may be an essay on more or less ancient 
history. These three are named in the order 
of their desirability and salability; a paper 
will almost always buy the first, and almost 
never the last. 

The acceptability of such an article de- 
pends largely on four things: its contents, its 
timeliness, the editor's previous covering of 
the same subject, and the state of the paper's 
exchecker. If it be a news special — that is, 
if it be made up of facts never before pub- 
lished — it will have the best chance of publi- 
cation, despite faults of composition or style. 
If it be editorial in nature and express opin- 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 125 

ions its acceptance will depend also upon 
whether such opinions tally with the policy 
of the paper or not. If it be a rehash of facts 
already more or less widely known, its only 
hopes of finding favor in the editor's sight 
will lie in the skill with which the story is re- 
told and the timeliness of such a recapitula- 
tion of the subject. 

This element of timeliness is a very im- 
portant one in special work, as it is in all 
newspaper writing. A news article finds its 
cause in the occurrence of the event which it 
chronicles. The editorial rests its excuse for 
existence upon the news article which has 
provoked its comment. And so with the spe- 
cial there must be some peg of news upon 
which to hang the story. Like the introduc- 
tion of a fresh topic in conversation, the pub- 
lication of every newspaper article ought to 
be suggested by something. A special, there- 
fore, ought at least to begin with a reference 
to some new bit of information or some re- 
cent turn in affairs that has directed people's 
attention to that subject. A newspaper is 
expected to treat of things that people are 
talking about, and if it so far departs from 
its normal province of news purveyor as to 
print something partly historical it must at 
least have the semblance of an excuse for do- 
ing so. In short, every story must have a 
raison d'etre; otherwise the newspaper would 



126 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

become a cyclopedia or a treatise on ancient 
history. This idea of timeliness, too, applies, 
though not quite so stringently, to magazine 
writing. 

Special articles when written by some one 
not on the regular staff are usually submitted 
4 'on space," that is, they are sent to the editor 
with the understanding that if printed they 
are to be paid for by the column at the usual 
rates of the paper. These rates vary from 
$10 on New York papers to $2 on well-to-do 
country journals. The space that a certain 
article will fill of course depends upon the 
size of the type and the length of the column. 
The average -column of ordinary length and 
of thirteen-pica width contains, in minion 
type, about 1600 words. Nearly all country 
correspondents and irregular contributors 
are paid thus by the column, and in New 
York even the regular reporters working on 
general assignments nearly all write on space; 
sometimes they make $100 a week, and some- 
times $10. 

As special articles can often be written at 
home and sent by mail to the editor, this is a 
field in which women have as good a chance 
as men; and as this presents one avenue of 
access to the regular work on the staff — and 
probably the most available one for women — 
a few suggestions on how to go about the 
matter may be of interest to aspirants of both 
sexes. .. 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 127 

If you have a personal acquaintance on 
some paper, or a private "pull" of any kind, 
you may be able to get a position through 
these means. If so, you are one of those 
lucky mortals that have no need of a book 
like this. Bat if you are a stranger to all 
newspaper offices, there are at least three 
ways in which you may legitimately lay siege 
to them. 

One way is to go to a managing editor, in- 
troduce yourself with a letter of recommenda- 
tion, tell him what you want to do and what 
you are quite sure you can do, and ask for a 
trial. This is the method that the green hand 
usually adopts, and it is about the poorest 
way in the world to get employment on a 
newspaper, though it is better than not try- 
ing at all. The editor, in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred, will hear your tale with 
more or less impatience, and cut you off with 
the statement that his staff is complete at 
present. Perhaps, if he is in an unusually 
good humor, he may ask you to leave your 
address so that he may send for you in case 
he should want some one in the near future. 
But he almost never sends. 

Another way is to study up one or more 
new subjects for articles that you think will 
be timely and interesting, go to the editor, 
give him an outline in a few words of the 
stories that you have in mind, and ask per- 



128 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

mission to write up one of them and submit it 
for his approval. This is a much better way 
than the other, though you are still liable to 
be politely informed that the paper has no 
need of outside help at present and that those 
assignments are all covered. 

A third method, and for general use the 
best, is to select your own subjects, after a 
careful study of the style of articles in the 
paper for which you intend to write, make 
the most interesting and newsy story of which 
your pen is capable, and submit it to the edi- 
tor either personally or by mail; your article 
will have just as good a chance if it goes by 
mail as if you handed it to the editor yourself, 
and if you enclose enough stamps it will be 
mailed back to you in case it is rejected. If 
that happens, as it most assuredly will in 
many cases, the only thing is, not to give up 
right away, but to send it to some other 
paper in whose columns it is likely to fit, and 
to keep on doing this until the article either 
proves itself worthless or finds the right 
place. 

An editor places very little reliance upon 
recommendations or talk about what a new 
writer can do; all the recommendation he 
wants or will be satisfied with is a sample of 
good work done by the applicant. After he 
has seen and accepted a few special stories 
he will for the first time think seriously of 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 129 

giving the author of them a permanent posi- 
tion if there happens to be a vacancy on his 
staff. 

Half the secret of getting your specials 
into print lies in being first on hand with a 
piece of news that the editor wants; and the 
other half lies in having the ideas in plain 
English, arranged on the best-first plan out- 
lined in a previous lesson. 

How can you tell what the editor wants, 
do you ask ? Look at this morning's paper 
and see what he thought, when he sat down 
at his desk last night, that his readers would . 
want today. Put yourself in his place and 
try to think what those same readers will 
want tomorrow and next day. If you can 
forestall any of those wants and put the right 
kind of article in the editor's hands in time, 
you will get $5 or $6 from a Chicago paper 
for each column printed, or $10 from a New 
York paper, and welcome, whether you are 
on the staff or an utter stranger. 

But, for the love of literature, don't offer 
the editor a dissertation on "The Beauty of 
Morality" when he is engaged in a hand-to- 
hand fight with the telephone, or present 
him with a description of the temple at 
Karnak when he is struggling to get a report 
of a World's Fair fire, or make him hate the 
sight of your manuscript by inflicting upon 
him something about butterflies on the planet 



130 ST£PS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Mars when lie is in the throes of a national 
election. 

Special writing has its advantages and its 
successes, but, to tell the truth, most writers 
not on a newspaper staff find space work a 
rather unreliable means for keeping the wolf 
from the door. The objection to it is the 
same as that which confronts the writer of 
magazine articles: one can never be sure of 
what is going to suit the editor. The best 
that one can do is to study carefully the 
nature of the articles a periodical has pub- 
lished in the past, learn thus as nearly as 
possible the taste of the editor, and then 
write something that will, as far as one can 
judge, conform to his standard. Perhaps in 
four cases out of five the story will be re- 
turned with thanks — if stamps were enclosed 
— or if published will be so cut down as no 
longer to be profitable. There is one com- 
fort, however; if the article has any real 
merit it will find acceptance with some editor, 
sooner or later, provided the writer tries it 
often enough. And in undergoing this inevi- 
table disappointment over rejected manuscript 
the beginner should never forget that every 
time he submits an article on space he is 
asking for the full pay of a writer who has 
spent years in learning the profession. The 
only thing for him to do, therefore, is to be 
humble and patient, pocket his disappoint- 
ment, and keep on trying. 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 131 

The special is really one of the most elabo- 
rate and difficult products of journalism. For 
the beginner to attempt it is therefore a good 
deal like trying to reach the top of the hill at 
a single bound. And yet this is almost the 
only path open to the great crowd of aspirants 
outside the sanctum— including the majority 
of woman writers. It is a hard sort of com- 
petitive examination in which only the few 
who stand highest get the coveted prizes. 
Despite its difficulty it is a legitimate road, 
and, with the exception of that lying through 
the country newspaper office, it is the best 
available. Besides, the fact that the material 
for this kind of articles lies ready at hand for 
anybody who has news scent enough to recog- 
nize it makes the attempt to scale the height 
not such a foolhardy thing after all. 
\ f \ Writing an acceptable newspaper special 
is at least not so difficult .a feat as writing a 
magazine article that will be printed. News- 
paper material is not submitted to so rigid a 
scrutiny, and the papers that want such spe- 
cial articles far outnumber the magazines. 
The newspaper special that is in demand at 
present is apparently the same thing as a 
short magazine article. It is true that the 
one grades off insensibly into the other. -Each 
contains anywhere from 500 to 10,000 words 
— usually about 3,000 — and each treats as a 
rule of some topic of the time. But on close 



132 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

inspection the average quality of the news- 
paper article will be found to differ from that 
of the magazine essay as materially as the 
two publications differ in form; in fact, the 
mentaJ and material differences between the 
two resemble each other. The newspaper 
article is the lighter of the two. It aims at 
sparkle rather than at accuracy — at enter- 
tainment rather than instruction; it is epheme- 
ral, and as a rule is meant to be so. 

The same rule should be followed in writ- 
ing a special as in reporting a news story: 
when possible, the brightest, crispest, newest 
thi ng in the article should be put first. Bits 
of dialogue breaking up the monotonous so- 
lidity of the column, if cleverly done, will 
add to the salability of the story. Wit or 
humor is always the best of material, and, as 
elsewhere in the world, will make its way 
and win a hearing where staid and sober wis- 
dom is left to wait without the gates. If you 
express any opinions that might provoke 
discussion, remember that you are treading 
"on sacred editorial ground, and venture 
nothing that will conflict in the least with the 
policy of the paper on the subject in question. 
Avoid religious doctrinal topics entirely. For 
the rest, you will have things pretty much 
your own way; the judgment, fancies, and 
necessities of the editor will be the jury to 
decide whether or not you have chosen a 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 133 

subject acceptable to the paper and treated 
it skillfully enough to entitle the article to 
publication. 

What will make good subjects for such 
articles ? Almost any public character, ob- 
ject or institution on which you have some- 
thing new to offer. Any topic with human 
interest in it. Anything that you would like 
to read about, yourself, and that half the 
people in your street would like to read. 
George "W. Smalley, the European corres- 
pondent, came pretty close to the truth when 
he remarked that he knew of but one defini- 
tion for news: "It is what people will want 
to read tomorrow morning." All that is 
necessary, then, is to write something that 
comes within this definition — and convince 
the editor of it. 

Select subjects that you know about and 
that everybody else does not know. Choose 
topics in which you are interested. Further 
than this nobody can help you much on the 
subject of subjects. If you love birds, write 
about the funny tricks of the blue jay or the 
wicked brawls of the English sparrow. If 
you know more about tramps, or toads, or 
theosophy, than other people, put your 
knowledge into attractive shape and get $10 
a column for it. 

Almost any city or town will furnish at 
least a few subjects. For instance, some 



134 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

noted man and the story- of his life; write it 
up just before he and his wife celebrate their 
silver wedding anniversary, or before his 
seventieth birthday, or just before his death 
if he is nearing his end; have the story in the 
editor's hands at the opportune moment when 
he is feeling the need of it, and the chances 
are that it will go into print. Queer or funny 
or tragic incidents in the history of a town or 
school, a hospital or a boat club — recalled at 
a time when for any reason public attention 
is directed toward that institution — will make 
salable matter if written in a simple and 
chatty style. A neighborhood feud, a ludi- 
crous or tragic quarrel between neighbors, 
the pathetic story of some blighted life — any 
odd or entertaining page from the great book 
of humanity which lies open to all who have 
eyes to read — these are in every sense worthy 
your best efforts, for they are not only "good 
stuff" in a newspaper, but they are the choic- 
est stock-in-trade of the novelist. 

Space articles are almost always used 
without any signature, just as if they had 
been written by a regular reporter of the pa- 
per; in fact, it is often well to work in some 
reference to the Times or Herald or Journal re- 
porter, as the case may be: but if you do this 
and it afterward becomes necessary to send 
the rejected manuscript to some other paper 
— well, a word to the astute sumceth. Your 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 135 

name and address should always appear in an 
upper corner of the first sheet of your copy, 
with sufficient stamps for the return of the 
manuscript if you -want it sent back in case 
of rejection. 

Don't waste time and divide your energies 
by juggling with a pen name. Use your own 
name and get it into print as often as you can. 
You will find it hard enough to get a paper to 
print any name at all with your article. Re- 
putation is money to the writer, and you will 
have all you can do to make one name famous. 
The time is past when it is necessary even 
for a feminine writer to assume a masculine 
pseudonym. Pen names are no longer in 
style. 

If you are a beginner, do not forget to 
leave the proper margins on your sheets, to 
avoid rolling your copy, and to leave about 
half your first page blank that the copy 
reader may have room in which to write the 
head lines. You are not expected to put any 
heading on your article, though it will do no 
harm to indicate by two or three well- chosen 
words the subject treated. 

There are a few special writers like George 
Alfred Townsend, better known as "Gath," 
Margaret Sullivan, Mrs, Frank Leslie, Nellie 
Bly, Frank G. Carpenter, Edgar L. Wake- 
man, ex- Senator Ingalls, and a handful of 
English correspondents, like Harold Fred- 



136 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

eric, George W. Smalley and Edmund Yates, 
who can get published almost anything that 
they write, with the signature to each article. 
But these fortunates are few and far between, 
and they have as a rule earned their promi- 
nence by years of previous preparation in ob- 
scurity, or by first making a name as authors 
of books or in public service. Or perhaps 
they have gained fame by distinguishing 
themselves in some difficult branch of the 
work, like Archibald Forbes, the war corres- 
pondent. There are, at any rate, a few who 
can make more money as free lances than 
they could as members of a staff.* But for 
the rank and file of newspaper writers 
such space work is only a means to an end, 
and that end is an editorial position that will 
give steady pay for steady work. 

Occasional correspondence is a kind of 
special writing that is open to any writer liv- 
ing in a town or city in which for any reason 
there is an outside interest. For instance, a 
resident of a summer resort like Lake Ge- 
neva, 111., might collect a lot of stories and 
personal sketches of prominent men and wo- 

*Frank G. Carpenter recently told me that he never makes less 
than $5,000 a year from his syndicate articles, and that he and his 
wife by the same means paid for a trip around the world and 
cleared $S,ooo besides from the travel letters which he had dictated 
and she had written on the typewriter during tbeir journey. "We 
didn't work half as hard as the professional tourists, either," he 
added. But everybody has not that kind of abili y, to say nothing 
of that kind of wife. 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 137 

men who are in, their summer cottages there 
at the height of the season, and, by arranging 
them in the shape of a letter to a Chicago pa- 
per, make an acceptable article that would 
gladly be paid for at space rates. Or per- 
haps a woman living in Petoskey, Mich., 
might collect the humorous or otherwise in- 
teresting incidents that come to her notice 
during the season when the hay fever patients 
come nocking to that region for relief; to this 
she might add anecdotes on other Petoskey 
topics, compiling thus a letter that a Detroit 
or Grand Rapids paper might be glad to print 
and pay for. Such a letter can be sent to 
any paper that is likely to have readers inter- 
ested in the subjects touched upon. 

This is really nothing but a modified spe- 
cial with a date line at the top. It is subject 
to the same difficulties and the same rules as 
the ordinary special, only, it may deal with a 
wider variety of topics. It is the nearest ap- 
proach to the old-time news letter that has 
survived the coming of the telegraph. This 
sort of matter will be paid for by editors, if 
accepted, at the same rate as news or special 
matter, and should be accompanied with a 
brief note like this: 

Editor Detroit Free Press — Dear Sir: 

Herewith is enclosed a bit of special correspondence 
on Petoskey topics which I should be pleased to have 
you use, in whole or in part, at your usual space rates. 



138 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

I enclose stamps for return of manuscript if not found 
available. Yours truly, Jemima Jones. 

Petoskey, Mich. 

Such a letter may also l.e sent with an or- 
dinary special story, though the mere name, 
address and stamps at the top of the first 
page are usually all that is necessary. The 
chief use of such a letter is to make clear the 
terms on which the matter is offered for pub- 
lication. The smaller papers are usually un- 
able to pay for contributed articles, though 
they are often willing enough to print them 
over the signature of the writer, without pay. 
The large city papers go on the principle that 
what is not worth paying for is not worth us 
ing. In any case, when anything personal of 
this kind is written to the editor, the briefer 
it is, the better. 

In sending any unsolicited contribution to 
a paper, never forget that you are depending 
partly on chance and are dropping your hook 
into dark waters. If you fail to get a bite, 
do not be discouraged and give up fishing too 
quickly. There are so many regular sources 
from which a great daily gets material — the 
telegraphic press associations, the syndicate 
bureaus many of which supply excellent lit- 
erature at low rates, the staff of trained writ- 
ers in each office, and the special correspond- 
ents in all the great centers — that the outside 
contributor should rather be surprised when 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 139 

an irregular article is accepted than when it 
is rejected. It cannot be denied that there is 
a woeful waste of time and energy in almost 
every case where a new writer tries this meth- 
od of getting a foothold; but what else can 
we do? The number of persons who want to 
write for the press is constantly increasing, 
and these myriad manuscripts are flitting 
to and fro over the land, bombarding the edi- 
tors and causing a world of useless work for 
them, the mail carriers and the aspirants for 
literary fame. Yet, as the existing system is 
constituted, this is the only chance for many 
of us. It is one more case of the survival of 
the fittest — or at least of the most persistent. 
The journalistic novice may, however, save 
himself many a misguided effort if he will 
note the kinds of material that are most in 
demand. News always has the best chance. 
Even in the semi-literary matter used in the 
Sunday papers the news idea is predominant 
and there is but slim show for the magazine 
essay, however finished or deeply pondered. 
People are more important than things; the 
human interest is universal; the interest in 
science or scenery is limited. Travels abroad, 
unless they be written by a master hand and 
swing far from guide-book lines, are scarcely 
salable. The inside workings of the last po- 
litical convention are worth far more than the 
details of the greatest battle of the re vol u- 



140 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

tion. This is not because the editor lacks pa- 
triotism, but because his readers are more in- 
terested in the present than in the past. 
And for a glimpse of the future the patrons 
of newspapers are still more eager; this is 
only a more refined phase of that universal 
human trait which, among the ignorant, gives 
fortune tellers their patronage. Hence the 
wise journalistic aspirant will keep in mind 
the never-ceasing rivalry of editors to get 
hold of any news that may have a bearing on 
the outcome of an approaching event of im- 
portance. 

Anecdotes about people already known to 
the public are always legal tender in a news- 
paper office. Even quite trivial matters con- 
cerning the daily life or the ideas and prefer- 
ences of noted men or women are considered 
"good stuff." The chief prerequisite is that 
the subject of the sketch shall be widely 
known to readers; whether he be famous or 
infamous is a distinction of minor importance. 
An anecdote that would be rejected as fiat ,if 
told of yourself or of some other exemplary 
or harmless person, will be eagerly snapped 
up if it happens to relate to some notorious 
murderer. This is not because the editor is 
so wicked that his perverted taste counts you 
as a less important member of society than 
the man who aspires to the gallows; neither 
is it because the newspaper reader prefers 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 141 

evil to good. It is simply an illustration of 
the universal fact that we are all more inter- 
ested in people we know than in strangers. 

When you write a private letter to a 
friend, you retail all the gossip, good and 
bad, about your common acquaintances. So 
it is when the newspaper man writes to his 
friends, the subscribers; he must talk about 
people who are already known or who have 
done something startling enough to entitle 
them to be introduced to the reader. News- 
paper readers know a limited number of pub- 
lic characters by their names, just as they 
know a limited number of private acquaint- 
ances by their faces. These familiar names 
are the ones for the writer to conjure with, 
for they are the ones in which the world is 
most interested. 

Never lose sight of the tastes and preju- 
dices of those for whom you are writing. If 
as a young man you were writing a descrip- 
tion of a football game to your mother you 
would make the scrimmage appear much 
more gentle and dignified than if you were 
telling your chum how you tackled that pes 
tiferous Jones and brought him down with a 
crash. This editorial faculty you exercise al- 
most unconsciously by keeping in mind the 
character of the person to whom the letter is 
addressed. The news sense and the editorial 
conscience are simply extensions of the same 
faculty. 



142 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Remember that readers like to be inter- 
ested, surprised — even shocked sometimes. 
But they never like to be disgusted. If you 
must describe something revolting make it as 
mild as possible. Remember, too, that the 
strongest prejudice in the human breast is 
the religious prejudice, the whole way from 
Catholicism to Atheism. It never pays to 
run up against it. 

By experience the editor of each paper 
comes to know almost instinctively what his 
readers desire, and as failure to meet that de- 
sire means ruin for his paper he is ever on 
the alert for news and literary features that 
will meet these requirements. That is why 
he is so patient in wading through the mass of 
stuff that every mail lands on his desk; and 
that, too, is why the obscure beginner has a 
hearing. 

Often the editor can tell at a glance that a 
manuscript is not available, and one object of 
this book is to teach beginners not to con- 
demn themselves on their very first pages. 
For blacksmith work one look is usually 
enough; for another grade of work a perusal 
of half the article may be necessary to con- 
vince the editor that he cannot use it; other 
manuscripts he must read through before he 
can decide for or against them; and occasion- 
ally he welcomes with a sigh of relief a gem 
that appears among the mass of mediocrity. 



WRITING A SPECIAL. 143 

He is really anxious for suitable material and 
feels almost repaid for all his drudgery when 
he can discover a new writer who can add to 
the interest of his columns. His reason for 
the rejection of a story is not that its author 
is unknown, nor that it is unfit for publication 
otherwheres, nor that he is prejudiced in any 
respect, but only that he has but limited space 
and wishes to fill this with the material most 
to his readers' liking. His feeling at reject- 
ing a manuscript is often greater than the 
chagrin of the author at having his work re- 
turned. 

Here are a few pertinent "rather s" emitted 
by a Washington editor which it would be 
well for expectant contributors to bear in 
mind: 

Rather restrain your thoughts within a column 
than let them, run riot through two or more columns. 
A newspaper is not intended for the publication of 
essays. 

Rather have your article typewritten than pre. 
pared with a pen. Absolute legibility insures dispatch 
in sending the manuscript one way or the other — to 
the printer or to the post office. 

Rather deal with fresh every-day material about in- 
dividuals than with events surrounded by a halo of his- 
tory. A newspaper is not a memorial volume. 

Rather permit the editor to judge of a manuscript 
than submit your own explanations in writing. He 
has to read enough without being obliged to peruse 
either your autobiography or your critique on your 
own production. 



144 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Rather let the editor be a nonentity as far as you 
are concerned than seek to meet him. At his office 
his time is fully occupied by worjc, and away from the 
office he is not an editor. 

Nobody can give you new and original 
thoughts or even tell you on what subjects 
the spirit may move you most potently. Nor 
can any one say that you will write, if the 
spirit does move you, spontaneously, as the 
thrush sings; for you won't, even though you 
be a Macaulay. You may be a born writer, 
and yet you will have to learn to shape your 
thought, laboriously and patiently, by long 
practice, just as the great painter learns his 
art. In fact, the work of the artist and that 
of the writer are very closely allied. Both 
draw pictures from life — either real or ideal 
— the one in colors, the other in words. It is 
hard to tell which has the broader and more 
fascinating field before him — the artist or the 
novelist. Either vocation requires a certain 
natural fitness and an absorbing love for the 
work, and both are equally worthy the grand- 
est efforts of which any man or woman is ca- 
pable. 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 

Almost all parts of the vast field of liter- 
ary work now lie open to women and invite 
them to enter. One of the most wonderful 
changes of this age of change is the crusade 
of womankind in the direction of business and 
away from her traditional domain of the 
kitchen and the household. It has caused 
the demand for servant girls to exceed the 
supply to an expensive degree, but, as long 
as the men are not left to starve, they ought 
not to raise an outcry about that. Women 
certainly have the right to do whatever kind 
of work they prefer, provided they do it 
better than those with whom they come into 
competition. Right there is the rub when it 
comes to journalism, as we shall see later. 

As Victor Hugo remarked, the woman of 
the nineteenth century is a conundrum, but 
we will not give her up. She does show an 
alarming inclination to leave the quiet of the 
household for the din of the forum, but when 
a woman will she will, and there's an end 
on't. Just now the pen is claiming its full 
share of this ambitious feminine army. Scarce- 
ly any other profession, unless it be that of 



146 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

teaching", gives women so nearly an equal 
chance with men as does -that of literature in 
this last decade of the nineteenth century. In 
the field of fiction it is an even race between 
the writers of the gentler and those of the 
sterner sex; there is no longer any need for 
the woman to assume a masculine pen name 
in order to gain a hearing with publishers. 
As a writer of juvenile fiction the literary 
woman is far and away ahead of her brother, 
notwithstanding her weakness for the silly 
goody-goody bosh that fills up our Sunday- 
school libraries. Juvenile writing is one of 
the things that women are fitted for by na- 
ture. The world has come at last to admit 
that a woman's brain is as good as a man's 
brain, though it still has a stubborn notion 
that women ought to confine their efforts to 
certain suitable lines, like the one just 
named. 

A glance at the shelves of any great 
library will show that the number of femi- 
nine authors is becoming greater every year; 
take our magazines collectively and you will 
find Mary's name among their contributors 
fully as often as John's. In newspaper work 
alone it is different; here the field is still der 
cidedly in the hands of the men, and the very 
nature of the work demands that it remain 
so, to a large extent. Yet even on the news- 
paper the women have a strong foothold and 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 147 

are making a larger place for themselves 
every year. Especially in the journalism of 
the smaller towns, where the stress and 
strain are not so heavy as in the cities, wom- 
en are doing a good deal of unostentatious 
but successful work at the desk, and many of 
our largest country weeklies owe their bright 
paragraphs to the faithful labors of ambitious 
women. 

But on the large metropolitan daily the 
outlook for women is not so bright. Much 
of the work is too arduous, too exhausting, 
and for the most part too rude in its require- 
ments for the gentler sex. The local report- 
ing work deals too exclusively with men and 
the affairs of men to allow of a fair chance in 
it for women; and the immense amount of 
technical business knowledge required to be 
a successful copy reader is something which 
few women under present conditions are like*- 
ly to possess, while the amount of nervous 
strain and concentrated mental and physical 
energy demanded at the editorial desk are 
things for which women as a rule are not 
fitted by nature. 

For these and other reasons the great city 
dailies will probably long continue in the 
hands of the masculine half of the race and 
will therefore long remain essentially men's 
papers, setting forth men's ideas of life and 
government, and studiously looking askance 



148 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

at the ideas and reforms of the Woman's 
Christian Temperance Unions and Woman's 
Rights Associations. But if these latter con- 
tinue to labor for their cause and to ''keep 
everlastingly at it," as they seem determined 
to and as they certainly have a right to if 
they wish it, we may some day see a revolu- 
tion in this profession as we have seen in 
school teaching. My mission, however, is not 
that of seer but of chronicler. Let us 
look at the chances for a woman today in city 
newspaper work. 

Most large papers now find it necessary 
to run a "Woman's Department," devoted to 
the household, the fashions, and a liberal 
padding of more or less silly twaddle written 
"by women for women." This department 
and the juvenile and society columns are the 
woman editor's strongest hold. 

"What !" exclaims the strongminded and 
sensible woman, "Are fashions and society 
gossip — these husks of frivolity — the best 
that you can offer us on the large city jour- 
nal ? " 

Unfortunately, that is about all at present. 
In fact, that is all for which the average 
woman's training has fitted her. She cannot 
expect to write about either business or poli- 
tics without having devoted years to their 
study, as men do; and business and politics 
are the body and breath of journalism. So, 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 149 

when I state, what is the fact, that women 
are generally looked on with disfavor as ap- 
plicants for active newspaper work, it is for 
much the same reason as that which would 
keep a woman, though starving, from getting 
employment as a coal heaver. She can't do 
the work in the one case any more than in the 
other, and never will be able to, no matter 
how eagerly she may desire it, so long as she 
gets no sterner training than that of the girls' 
boarding school, the parlor and the ballroom. 
Whether she should leave these and seek the 
other or not should be a matter for her own 
tastes to decide. One thing is sure, she can 
not become oak and still remain ivy. 

After the feminine and juvenile depart- 
ments the next best chance that a woman has, 
under present conditions, on a city news- 
paper, is as a "special" writer, as described 
in a previous chapter. Then, as a literary or 
exchange editor, she has a chance, though 
• certainly not an even chance, to get a posi- 
tion. Finally, as an all-around reporter, she 
has at least a little show, but only on the 
largest papers where she, so to speak, does 
the frills and fringes of reportorial work; 
editors arid publishers are beginning to real- 
ize that it pays to write up at least the 
greater events — especially those in which 
both men and women are actors — as seen 
from a woman's standpoint, as well as from 
the ordinary point of view. 



150 STEPS INTO JO URN A LISM. 

For instance, all the largest journals of 
the country sent one or two woman reporters 
to the last national nominating conventions; 
even at the Democratic convention in Chicago 
the New York papers were represented by one 
woman in almost every reportorial corps. 
So, too, most of the New York papers sent- 
women to the World's Fair to write specials 
independently of the men who were the regu- 
lar correspondents. And so we have articles 
headed, "World's Fair Dedication as Seen by 
a Woman, " "Derby Day Races from a Femi- 
nine Standpoint," "Nellie Bly's Experience 
in the Salvation Army, " and so on. 

This is encouraging enough as far as it 
goes; but, after all, these cases are the ex- 
ception, and it is only the exceptional woman 
who gets such a position. These articles, 
too, are naturally superficial and frothy — at 
least from a man's point of view; they are 
meant to be nothing more than so much bright 
gossip, telling who was there, how Mrs. So- 
and-So was dressed, when the audience smiled, 
how the speaker's cravat worked around un- 
der his left ear as he made the enthusiastic 
nominating speech, how tired the poor dear 
horse looked after he had won the Derby, and 
all the rest of those funny or pathetic or 
sentimental things that women see where 
men do not. Any woman who can write 
clever nothings of this sort will be able 



WOMEN IN NE WSPAPE R WORK. 151 

sooner or later to get a position on a city 
paper and to draw as much pay for it as any 
of her brother special writers. But the only 
way she can convince any editor that she is 
the woman for such a place is to write some- 
thing that is up to his standard and submit it 
to him at the moment when he is feeling the 
need of an article of the kind on the particu- 
lar subject treated. 

To this extent, and to a much wider extent 
as society reporter, woman has taken a perma- 
nent place in the local room — the dirty, dingy, 
tobacco- polluted local room. She has her desk 
there along with the other reporters and is 
called up by the city editor and given assign- 
ments and adjured to "rush her stuff lively," 
the same as any of the young men; in fact, 
the nearer she can come to being ' k one of the 
boys," without laying aside any of her wom- 
anliness, the greater will be her chance of 
success. Do not misunderstand me; I do not 
mean that she shall be "mannish" in her 
ways of acting or thinking or in her style of 
writing; that is exactly what she is not there 
for. 

What I do mean is that she shall not ex- 
pect any of that chivalrous homage from her 
fellow reporters of the male persuasion that 
she might have a right to look for in a parlor 
or a ballroom. She will make a fatal mistake 
if she stands on her dignity and expects the 



152 S7EPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

whole force to remember that there is ; 'a lady 
in the room" whenever she is about; in fact, 
right here lies one of the most deeply rooted 
objections to having a woman about a news- 
paper office at all. It is not an unusual thing 
to hear a newspaper man say that he hates 
women in journalism, because an editor is too 
busy to be eternally polite — he cannot be 
bothered watching his words all day long 
to make them fit for the ears of some Miss 
llancy. 

One thing is sure, if a woman wishes to 
make a place for herself in the newspaper 
office she must put up with things and men 
as she finds them. When she enters the local 
room she must not expect the reporters to 
put on their coats or take off their hats or 
remove their pipes from their mouths, any 
more than they would for a man. Those who 
are of that stripe — and alas ! some of them 
are— will swear just as vociferously and come 
in half drunk once in a while just as surely 
as if she were not there. And yet, aside 
from the lack of these little extra amenities 
that society elsewhere accords her sex, she 
will be treated with all the true consideration 
and respect to which her character may en- 
title her. 

I am. anxious to give every reader a cor- 
rect idea of the surroundings amid which a 
woman must work on a city newspaper, for 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 153 

this is one of the cases in which a rose-tinted 
ideal may do a world of harm. A newspaper 
is a business enterprise, run, like any other 
business, to make money. The employes of 
the great "educator and uplifter, " as the 
press delights to call itself, are no better mor- 
ally than those of any other business estab- 
lishment. The editorial room, therefore, is 
not exactly a Sunday school or a university 
for moral reform. If a woman wishes to push 
her way into this place — or, indeed, into any 
other new profession or trade — as she has a 
perfect right to if she has the qualifications 
with which to back up the desire — no one will 
say her nay. But she must not expect any 
favors — only a fair, even chance to have her 
work judged, like that of men, solely upon 
its power to attract readers; neither must she 
expect to reform the whole profession all at 
once, or to use the columns of the paper in 
which to moralize or sermonize. If she does 
expect it the copy reader will soon open her 
eyes on that point. If she is not sufficiently 
of the earth, earthly, to attract the worldly 
penny she must not expect to do her mission- 
ary work at the expense of the publisher who 
pays the bills. 

How shall a woman go about getting a 
place on the staff? is a question that every 
newspaper writer has to answer many times. 
The best short answer that I know is, Write 



154 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

something that the editor wants and get it 
into his hands before anybody else has cov- 
ered it. The various ways of going about the 
matter are given at length in the foregoing 
chapter on special writing. 

The special furnishes a broad but thorny 
road to newspaperdom that is open to all, be- 
cause anybody, rich or poor, at home or in a 
strange land, can at least try it. It is there- 
fore, generally speaking, the best free-for-all 
highway that we have. And there seem to 
be about as many women as men who reach 
distinction by it.* 

A few examples will serve to show that as 
a rule something more than mere facility with 
the pen is required to attain the spectacular 
sort of fame that comes to the successful spe- 
cial writer. Nellie Bly has won her reputa- 
tion by going to the bottom of New York har- 
bor in a diver's suit, circling the globe alone 
in seventy-odd days, and performing similar 
daring tricks in the interest of the New York 



*As instances taken at random may be named Marian Harlat d 
whose articles on cooking are always in demand; Mrs. Jenness 
Miller, who has been able to make interesting newspaper reding 
on dress reform; Jennie June, whoi-e real name is Mrs. Croly, and 
who is known all over the country for her syndicate fashion letters; 
Nellie Bly, who has indulged in numerous journalistic escapade?, 
including a race around the world that made her famous; Fanny B. 
Ward, whose letters from Patagoria and various odd corners of 
South America have been published by a syndicate of papers east and 
west for the last two years, and who is a living example of the fact 
that women can sometimes make a success of the most difficult 
kind of travel correspondence. 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 155 

World and her own pocketbook. Nora Marx, 
a young Chicago woman, laid a plan to write 
up the abuses that were known to exist in the 
Cook County Insane Asylum a few years ago, 
and took the hazardous method of feigning to 
go crazy on the street, being dumped into a 
patrol wagon by the police, carted off to the 
asylum, and going through all that a real lu- 
natic had to suffer under the wretched man- 
agement then existing in that institution. 
The article she wrote after her friends se- 
cured her release made her reputation. Miss 
Pascal, another ambitious Chicago girl, 
joined the harem of the religious impostor, 
Schweinfurth, with the express purpose of 
writing an expose of its workings. Her two- 
page article on the subject made a sensation 
and gained her a permanent place on the staff 
of the paper that contained it. 

No further proof is necessary to show that 
women can win what the world calls success 
even in the most difficult and disagreeable 
lines of journalistic work. But it is also ap- 
parent that no woman can succeed in this 
rude and risky sort of business unless she 
love the pen better than anything else and 
unless she be willing to devote her whole 
time, energy and power to it. And even then, 
is not the sacrifice more than the gain? One 
thing is sure, if women do push their way 
into the thickest of the fierce struggle for ex- 



156 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

istence that curses modern city journalism, 
they will swiftly lose many of their high 
ideals and sweet and tender ways, as inev- 
itably as if they had been run through a ma- 
chine for the purpose. And what is the use? 
There is plenty of literary work lying nearer 
home — the spot that women used to think 
dearer than fame or dollars. Treating of 
household work, collecting society personals, 
writing sketches of noted women they have 
met, telling tales for children or weaving bits 
of ideal fiction that are often truer than the 
realism of a sensational special— these are 
things that women can do with the pen, with 
the least loss and the greatest gain to the 
world. 

For the woman who is determined to get 
a place in city journalism there is only one 
means that surpasses the special, and that is 
to secure a place on a local paper and work 
from that into the larger field. It is usually 
a comparatively easy thing, by making one's 
self useful free of charge for a time, to get a 
permanent place on a village or town paper, 
with at least a little pay for one's services. 
A little patience, and a little good work in 
gathering up personal items and anecdotes 
and handing them to the editor in good sea- 
son each week, will sooner or later get you a 
place as regular reporter, and from that you 
may be able to work into an editorial position 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 157 

if the paper is one of any size. You may also 
occupy the interval in trying your fortunes 
at special writing, mailing your articles to 
some large city daily, thus combining both 
methods of attacking the enemy. 

When you once have a permanent position 
on a local paper you are almost within shout 
ing distance of a city daily, if you are still 
determined to seek the higher pay and in- 
linitely more wearing work found in that 
field. All the large metropolitan papers 
must have correspondents in each town to 
send them important items of news when 
such occur in the neighborhood, and to secure 
these representatives they almost invariably 
write to the local paper, asking the editor to* 
recommend some one. It makes no difference 
to the city paper whether its representative 
be a man or a woman or a boy, so long as the 
work is done quickly and well when it is 
wanted. Thus, for instance, the Tribune and 
Inter Ocean of Chicago, which have thousands 
of such local correspondents all over the 
West, are represented in hundreds of towns 
by women. True, this work of reporting 
accidents, scandals, conventions, etc., is not 
quite so well adapted to a woman as to a man, 
because it requires a person who can rush off 
to all sorts of places at all sorts of times. 
Yet there are many women who are doing it 
and doing it well. 



158 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

When once a correspondent becomes a 
trusted representative of a city daily, even 
in a small town where the dispatches do not 
amount to a column in two months, the final 
step toward securing a place on the office 
staff- is chiefly a matter of excellence and 
push. Remember, I would not advise any 
woman who has a reasonably good position 
on a country paper to try to get into the city, 
for I know too well how much of the glamor 
that surrounds city newspaper life exists 
merely in the imagination of the outsider. I 
simply point out what I believe to be the best 
way to go about it if one has set one's heart 
upon the step. This avenue through the 
country newspaper office is the safest be- 
cause it allows the young enthusiast a chance 
to taste beforehand the cup of which she pro- 
poses to drink and gives her time to draw 
back before it is too late. This local tele- 
graphic correspondence and the special arti- 
cles that can be written at home have the 
advantage of giving the beginner full scope 
to try her wings without danger of a very 
serious fall, and without risking anything 
more than the time spent in writing. 

A young lady came to me recently and 
gravely asked whether she ought to give up 
school teaching in order to carry out her de- 
sire of becoming a writer. My answer was, 
most assuredly not, until she had first tried 



WO. WEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 159 

writing as a side issue and secured satis- 
factory proof in hard cash that she could 
make a success of it. Indeed, why any wom- 
an who can get $1,000 a year for teaching 
school should want to take up the harder and 
less remunerative work of a newspaper I 
could never understand; but as there seem to 
be plenty who are aching to do it they must 
be dealt with! 

Many writers have found to their sorrow 
that literature makes an excellent cane but a 
poor crutch. In other words, it is often con- 
venient for "making money on the side," 
when it would not do to depend upon for a 
living. A school teacher has a chance such 
as few others have: she can try her powers 
by writing during her leisure time without 
giving up the sure thing for the very un- 
certain income that is gained through the 
pen. After she has found a publisher or 
editor who will take all the articles that she 
can write it will be time enough to think 
about resigning the school teacher's desk for 
that of the writer. James Lane Allen, the 
Kentucky story writer, is an example of a 
teacher who worked thus in his leisure mo- 
ments for years, fitting himself for the liter- 
ary profession, before he finally gave up his 
college professorship to devote himself to the 
work that he loved more but which for even 
the best of its devotees has so little to give, 
especially at first. 



160 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Now let us take a look at newspaper work 
through a woman's eyes. A feminine journal- 
ist in New York recently delivered herself of 
some pithy and level-headed advice to young 
women who aspire to be members of the city 
press, in these terms: 

To begin, there are, of course, a great many things 
that you can learn only by actual experience in a news- 
paper office; but there are some things that you must 
know before you attempt to cross the threshold. 

You must know how to spell with tolerable accuracy, 
punctuate approximately, write a legible hand, and 
handle the English language with a certain degree of 
ease and fluency. 

Now, you are going to tell me that these things are 
not so important as I would make them appear: that 
there are people employed on newspapers today who 
cannot do any of these things. True, indeed. But 
such people have great ability in other directions to 
offset these shortcomings. They have ideas so original 
and valuable that the papers which employ them can 
afford to pay some one else to do the writing. [Such 
cases certainly exist, although they are exceptioral.] 
It would be foolish for you to try to imitate those 
people. It is easier to write good copy than to think 
original thoughts, and it is much better to be able to 
do a little in both lines. No one could tell you this 
quicker than these very people. 

We will suppose, however, that you possess these 
qualifications. The next thing is to get an opportunity 
to do some work. And the getting of this opportunity 
will probably prove the bitterest and hardest task in 
all your journalistic career. 

It is not an easy matter to obtain admission to an 
editor's office. In most cases you will be asked to set 
forth your designs and desires in writing before you 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 161 

are allowed to set foot in the elevator. And these 
desires will be enough to exclude you. Editors are 
busy folks and have no time to waste on unknown 
applicants like you. Perhaps, however, you have a 
letter of introduction to some one in authority. This 
is valuable in that it gives you a hearing. It usually 
has no further merit whatever, as you may find out to 
your disappointment some clay. 

Let us suppose that you gain admission by some 
wile or other (nearly all wiles are justifiable in news- 
paper work, as you will soon learn). You will be 
asked what you have already done, and you will feel 
very small, indeed, when you answer that you h^ve 
never done anything. Next you will be aske ~ you 
have any stories to submit or any ideas t« .ggest. 
You will learn with no small degree of as* ashment 
that ideas which seemed very large an^ posing at 
home diminish alarmingly when sp' of in the 

presence of the editor. All this and I jh more you 
will learn, and you will go home rather low in your 
mind. It may happen that the articles which you 
submitted for consideration are returned to you. It is 
apt to happen. But again it may happen that some- 
thing is accepted, and that in time you become a space 
writer on the paper. Space writing is not very re- 
munerative for women, but beginners must not expect 
to be salaried right away. 

And now, having fairly gotten into the business, 
you will have many things to learn, and your only 
teach,er will be yourself, for most newspaper people 
are never taught anything. They "catch on" to things 
somehow, or get them knocked into their heads by 
bitter experience. 

Every paper has a certain style of writing, which 
you will be expected to follow. Every paper has a 
certain policy, political and otherwise, to which you 
will have to conform. To be sure, you may not always 



162 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

agree .with them, but your personal opinions matter 
little. 

Punctuality and reliability are qualities which you 
will do well to cultivate. They will recommend you 
to your editor quite as effectually in the long run as 
mere brilliancy. There is one woman in New York 
who has been in newspaper work over fifteen years. It 
is her proudest boast that she never failed an editor or 
kept one waiting in all that time. 

You must have determination. It is not enough to 
attempt a thing. You must learn to stick to it until it 
is accomplished; if not in the way you originally in- 
tended, then in some other way. You must be re- 
sourceful, ingenious, a whole committee of ways and 
means in yourself. 

You must be patient. It is not a pleasant thing to 
wait an hour or two for an interview with a popular 
danseuse, or for the last sweet thing from the London 
variety halls, but you may have to, not once, but often. 
Interviewing is one of the hardest branches of the 
business. You are absolutely dependent upon the 
caprice of some other person, and even after that per- 
son has consented to receive you, you cannot be certain 
of obtaining what you want. All these people can be 
managed if only you know how to go about it. And 
you will do well to learn, or your editor will be wary 
about assigning you that work or any other. 

You must be tireless. No matter if you have worked 
all day; you must be willing to work all night, too, if 
your services are needed. Editors are very shy of 
reporters who beg oft' on account of being tired. 

And you must be unselfish. Good newspaper as- 
signments usually come when they are not wanted. It 
is always the night that you have elected to go to the 
theater that a blue-coated boy runs up your front steps 
with a message summoning you to the office immedi- 
ately. And the afternoon that you have expected to 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 163 

pass on the cool veranda of some woman friend's 
country house may find you sitting in the squalid, sti- 
fling' kitchen of a tenement house, listening to some 
other woman's story. 

And there are other hard things which it may be 
your lot to bear. I know a woman who sat by the bed- 
side of her dying sister one night— the little sister who 
was all she had left of kin on earth — and choked back 
the tears she dared not shed because there was other 
work for her eyes that night; who closed that sister's 
eyes and prepared her little white form for the coffin, 
and then, just as the gray dawn was creeping up over 
the city roofs, sat down to finish an article which must 
be in type that day. 

Newspaper work is no play. It has its compensa- 
tions, but only those who deserve receive them. And 
if one is not afraid of the trials of the work, is patient 
and faithful and tireless and everything else commend- 
able, and yet has not a subtle quality about her writ- 
ing — a suggestiveness, a dash, a certain something 
that makes it go — she will never be a success as a 
newspaper woman, and she had much better try almost 
anything else. 

From the standpoint of the editor we get a 
somewhat different view of- the same facts. 
William T. Stead, editor of the Revieiv of Re- 
views, says the first thing he would impress 
upon young women who aspire to be journal- 
ists is that they must not imagine they have 
a right to a situation simply because they are 
women. If women are to get on in journal- 
ism or in anything else they must trample un- 
der foot what Mr. Stead calls that most dis- 
honoring conception of their work as mere 
woman's work. One must not think that be- 



164 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

cause she is a woman chivalry demands that 
her work be judged more leniently than if she 
were only a man. An editor is like a builder. 
He has to build his house day by day with 
such bricks as he can order or procure. If 
women supply him with only half bricks he 
will only pay them half wages or refuse to 
employ them entirely. The nether integu- 
ments of the brick maker are nothing to him, 
and neither is the fact that she is supporting 
an invalid mother and in all charity needs 
money. He wants bricks, good bricks, whole 
bricks, and he would be more likely to throw 
a brick at your head than to accept a half- 
brick merely because a woman made it. 

After this, in the London editor's opinion, 
the next worst foe of women in journalism is 
their own conventionality and the fantastic 
notion that a lady cannot be expected to do 
this or that disagreeable bit of work. Wom- 
en who cling to the nonsensical notion that a 
lady ought not to be scolded when she does 
wrong, or that a lady ought not to stay up 
late or go about the streets at night, had bet- 
ter stay at home in their drawing rooms and 
boudoirs. The great, rough, real workaday 
world is not the place for them. They are 
the kind of material a certain editor had in 
mind, who, when asked to place a woman on 
his staff, exclaimed: "A woman! never! 
Why, you can't use expletives to a woman!" 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 165 

That settled it in his mind, and though his 
speech was rude it embodied the nub of an 
uncomfortable truth. As long as the women 
on a staff cannot be admonished as freely, 
promptly and vigorously as their male com- 
rades they will continue to be at an unfair 
disadvantage. 

Of course, women can do as they please. 
Only, if they please to do what does not fit 
into the existing system of the newspaper 
office the editor will be pleased to dispense 
with their services. It is not ladylike, you 
say, to report a police court case; it is not 
proper to be on the street at midnight. Well 
and good. If so, women need not apply for 
newspaper work on even terms with men. 
They may do odds and ends of work, they 
may have the fringes and the leavings, just 
as they have now, and be paid accordingly. 
As a matter of fact, women already have full 
possession of the work for which they are 
best suited— that of the household. But, if a 
girl is not content with this and sets out to 
be a reporter, she ought to be one out and 
out, and not try to be a reporter up to 9 
o'clock and Miss Nancy after 9. 

The old fogies of both sexes will say that 
it is impossible to preserve womanliness in 
newspaper work if journalism means all this. 
And they will be right if by the model woman 
they mean the clinging- vine, do-nothing- but- 



166 STEPS INTO JO URN A L ISM. 

look-pretty relic of feudalism that sometimes 
still goes by that name. But, thank heaven, 
the girl of the present decade is a creature 
with a backbone and a fairly level head on the 
end of it. To assert of such a woman that 
she cannot be ladylike if she works in an 
office with men till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morn- 
ing, is, as Mr. Stead says, simply to repeat 
an old and outworn fiction.' He is technically 
correct, too, when he adds that a girl who has 
proper self-respect can go about her business 
in English-speaking countries at all hours 
without serious risk either to safety or to re- 
putation; but he leaves out of ,his reckoning 
the many annoyances which a woman re- 
porter must almost inevitably suffer, and 
which she should not fail to consider before 
pushing her way into a field for which, when 
all is said, she is not as well fitted as are men. 
But this objection applies chiefly to the 
active outdoor reportorial work. In other 
departments the time will no doubt come, 
though it has not yet arrived, when women 
will make themselves as eligible as men for 
the work of journalism. The great trouble 
with young women as with young men is that 
the}^ forget that this is a profession requiring 
years of training and trial and failure before 
it is learned. Many women seem to think 
that whenever they want money all they need 
to do is to rush off to the nearest newspaper 



WOMEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK. 167 

office and ask the editor to pay them for arti- 
cles which, if they only had a little news- 
paper training to see it, are utterly worth- 
less. If you must go into journalism do not 
object to beginning at the bottom and learn- 
ing the business before expecting it to keep 
you. 

To sum it all up, if you are willing to 
work ]ike a man and yet not be mannish — if 
you can hold your own with any masculine 
writer and besides can add by your feminine 
charm to the scope and efficiency of the staff 
■ — you will be welcome in the newspaper office 
and will stand in much greater danger of be- 
ing spoiled by overkindness than of being 
treated with surly or grudging respect. 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 

Some philosopher has remarked that if the 
■wise never made mistakes it would go hard 
with the fools. If there is anybody who is in 
need of charity for his errors it is the news- 
paper man, and he gets almost none. Mis- 
takes will creep into the best-regulated news- 
paper, but woe to him through whom the of- 
fense cometh. Small errors mean a ' 'breeze, 
and large ones mean a notice to quit — not to 
quit making errors, but to quit the office. 

So, when you are on the grand jump to 
finish up the story of an accident that has oc- 
curred close to press time, with the city edi- 
tor after you in sulphurous anxiety and the 
copy boy taking the stuff from you page by 
page as fast as you write it, it is scarcely to 
be wondered at if on reading the story in type 
after the paper is out you are horrified to find 
that you have written: "The dead woman 
rushed to the door," or, "The unfortunate 
man was cut in two in three places," or, 
"With one hand he seized the drowning girl 
and with the other called loudly for help." 
It is funny, and you smirk and smile now; but 
you would laugh on the other side of your 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 169 

mouth if you knew how icy a managing edi- 
tor can be as he calls you to his office and ad- 
vises you to get a job on Puck — that you are 
too bright for his paper. 

The wrong things that one can write are 
infinite, while the right things seem painfully 
finite. But so far as this multitude of possi- 
ble errors can be classified they will nearly 
all fall under these very comprehensive heads: 
Incorrect spelling, punctuation or grammar; 
illegible or carelessly prepared copy; mixed 
metaphors and loose arrangement of words; 
wrong words and redundant terms; misstate- 
ment of fact, and wrong treatment of sub- 
jects. Let us glance briefly at each of these 
classes of errors. Imagine a couple of youth- 
ful literary aspirants interviewing a busy 
editor and a printer who happens to be in the 
sanctum. 

"Is correct spelling worth all the trouble 
that it takes ? ' ' asks one tyro. 

"It is an arbitary thing," adds the other. 
"What's the use in growing gray over a dic- 
tionary, so long as the printer can make out 
what you mean and set it in type according 
to Webster ?" 

"Very well said— quite original!'' mar 
murs the editor, as. without looking up, lie 
rssigns one more ill-spelled manuscript to 
the wastebasket. "But you had better learn 
how to spell." 



170 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

"Why?" 

"Because straws show how the wind blows. 
You show me a careless speller and I will 
show you a careless and inaccurate thinker. 
The reader who never notices how a new 
word is spelled is not a close enough observer 
to make a reliable reporter." 

"Yes," admits the first speaker, "a badly 
spelled manuscript will not have half a chance 
to be judged even on its merits; but you don't 
really mean that a person should bother 
punctuating every sentence, putting in all the 
little insignificant commas and apostrophes 
and quotation marks ? I always understood 
that the printer would attend to that." 

"Another lie nailed!" cries the editor, 
with an energy that is quite startling; "it is 
I who have to toil through the manuscript 
and insert the omitted marks, if the copy is 
to go to the printer at all — which I generally 
take care it shall not do, unless the writer is 
already famous or is so unusually talented 
as to make the extra labor worth my while. " 

"Yes," chimes in the printer; "bad punc- 
tuation is worse than bad spelling. I can 
usually guess what you mean no matter how 
you spell a word; but, not being a mind read- 
er, how can I tell what you had in your head 
when you wrote your sentences, if you have 
left out the proper dividing marks ? Besides, 
every moment that I spend in puzzling out 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 171 

blind copy is so much stolen by the writer 
out of the wages I get that day." 

"That's it!" exclaims the editor, frown- 
ing upon the now penitent theorist; "take, for 
instance, that trite subject for an after-dinner 
speech: 'Woman — without her man would be 
a savage. ' Those words may be profoundly 
true whether there be a dash after the first 
word or- not, but the punctuation certainly 
has a vital bearing upon the thought ex- 
pressed." 

"In the first ages of printing there were 
only three marks of punctuation, ' ' says the 
printer, "the comma, frequently made as 
an upright stroke, the colon and the period. 
Later — " 

"How I should like to hang the man who 
invented all the rest!" interrupts the am- 
bitious but easy-going youth who has gone 
through college yet who punctuates altogether 
with dashes. 

' 'Later, ' ' continues the printer, without 
deigning to notice the interruption, "the semi- 
colon, exclamation and interrogation marks 
were added. Quotation marks, the bane of 
the compositor and the most frequent cause 
of typographical errors, are a recent inven- 
tion. Dashes, parentheses and brackets ex- 
isted before type but came into printing long 
after it was an established art. " 

"But how is one to know when to use each 
of these ? * ' 



172 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

"Custom has determined the chief use of 
each. The comma indicates the point where 
an explanatory sentence is begun or ended; 
the semicolon marks the separation of two 
incomplete or interdependent sentences; the 
colon stands where the preceding sentence or 
part of a sentence ends with expectancy that 
is to be satisfied with what immediately fol- 
lows; the period or full -point indicates that 
the sentence is closed; the parentheses that 
one clause of a sentence, usually explanatory, 
is within another sentence; the bracket that 
what is enclosed is interpolated, usually by 
some person other than the writer of the 
original discourse, and the dash that one idea 
is suddenly broken into by another idea. The 
exclamation and interrogation marks explain 
themselves." 

"There," and the editor nods approvingly, 
"you have in a nutshell the theory of points; 
but let me add a point or two. The perplex- 
ing question of where to use the comma will 
be almost solved when once you realize that 
commas, in the majority of cases, go in pairs — 
though the necessary substitution of a period 
often obscures the fact— and that parentheses 
could be substituted for them. The meaning 
of the parenthesis has not changed since the 
sixteenth century, when it was often used for 
the comma. The custom has shortened the 
mark and broadened its scope of usefulness; 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 173 

that is all. A pair of dashes are often sub- 
stituted nowadays for the original parenthe- 
ses or ' finger - nails, ' as the printers call 
them." 

For the employment of the much-abused 
quotation marks the editor gave these rules: 

"Use the ordinary double marks to enclose 
the alternating speeches of a dialogue, and 
all utterancess repeated verbatim by a second 
person. Where a quotation occurs within a 
quotation, use the ' single' marks to designate 
it. If you should ever have a quotation at 
the third remove, 'inside of these "single" 
marks,' use double ones again. Where one 
speaker keeps on through more than one para- 
graph, put the double marks at the begin- 
ning of each paragraph, but not at the end of 
any but the last. On the other hand, for the 
love of piety, avoid that common lapse of the 
literary slattern — beginning a quotation and 
not marking its end." 

' 'And grammar — is that worth all the fuss 
that the school teachers make over it?" 

"Why, all that punctuation is for is to 
make clear to the eye the grammar of the 
printed sentences. How can you make clear 
by marks a thing that you do not yourself 
understand? You must be able to see all the 
hidden relations of your words to each other 
just as the skilled mechanic can see the work- 
ing of all the hidden parts of an engine. If 



174 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

you aspire to fit together 'the wheels and 
shafts and pinions of discourse you must not 
be too lazy to learn the rudiments of the pro- 
fession, or you will not be very likely to turn 
out anything that will 'go.' Of course, if 
you associate all your life with those who in- 
variably use correct grammar you may learn 
the right use of words unconsciously; but 
even that is superficial if it is not reinforced 
with a knowledge of the whys and where- 
fores. Certainly, learn grammar. Learn 
everything you can about the tools with which 
you intend to work all your life. 

"Even the best-educated writer is prone 
enough to be puzzled and to make slips. But 
there are certain flagrant and oft-repeated er- 
rors made by the careless beginner that are a 
weariness to the flesh and to the patience of 
the editor who has to reconstruct the manu- 
script which the incompetent tyro prides 
himself on having ' thrown off ' at a high rate 
of speed." 

"For instance?" queries the inquirer, feel- 
ing after his notebook. 

"One of the most annoying errors with 
which the newspaper editor has to contend is 
the reporter's and country correspondent's 
careless use of pronouns referring to collect- 
ive nouns. Words like mob, army, orchestra, 
society, family, can be used with either a sin- 
gular or a plural verb, and must have singu- 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 175 

lar or plural pronouns referring to them ac- 
cordingly. The careless writer, who thinks 
he knows it all without studying grammar or 
rhetoric, will often start out with the singu- 
lar and switch off to the plural. For instance, 
it is exasperating to the copy reader when a 
reporter writes: 'The society has decided to 
hold a special meeting, and they will assem- 
ble,' and sp on, to the end of a long sentence. 
And if the error inadvertently slips through 
the copy reader's hands it makes trouble for 
the proof-reader and type-setter as well as 
for the editor. The rule is, Use' the pronoun 
and verb in the singular if the idea of unity 
is to be conveyed, and in the plural if the idea 
of plurality is to be conveyed. Thus, ' The 
mob comes on in one compact body and hurls 
itself against the gates;' or, 'The mob now 
scatter in every direction and yell as they 
move off . ' Whatever you do, don't mix the 
two styles in the same paragraph. 

"Careless use of personal pronouns is 
equally inexcusable. If you must refer to the 
weakness of a Jack Tar, do not give your 
editor a needless shock by announcing that 
you i saw a sailor talking to the Rev. Philan- 
der Doesticks who was so drunk he could 
hardly stand.' Never use a relative or per- 
sonal pronoun without considering to what 
noun it will relate when the whole sentence is 
read. It is always better to repeat a name 



176 Sl^EPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

than to use a pronoun that will leave any 
doubt about its antecedent." 

"But," interrups the humble aspirant for 
literary honors, "how will I learn all these 
fine points?" 

' 'I do not know how you will learn to speak 
and write correctly," replies the editor, frown- 
ing and moving impatiently in the direction 
of his unfinished work, ' 'but if you mean to 
ask how you shall learn, I recommend that 
you read a good authority on grammar and 
another on rhetoric, and that you study the 
style of writers like George William Curtis 
and Matthew Arnold. One of the things that 
you will learn from such a course is that ' I 
shall, you will, he will,' are the forms of the 
future tense and merely foretell what is ex- 
pected to take place. ' I will, you shall, he 
shall,' express determination on the part of 
the speaker; they indicate that he means 
business — that this thing must take place, 
whether it wants to or not. Learn the En- 
glish language at least well enough to ask in- 
telligibly for help; otherwise you may meet 
the fate of the famous man who fell into the 
Thames and went down screaming, ' I will 
drown and nobody shall help me. ' ' 

The youth quails before the stern gaze of 
his critic and murmurs, ' 'I intend to earnestly 
try." 

1 'An intolerable ne wspaperism ! The act- 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 177 

i ve infinitive should be used as one word . No 
matter how many newspapers flagrantly vio- 
late this rule of universal language, don't do- 
it. Don't say, 'To earnestly try,' or 'To 
strenuously resist, ' and so forth, instead of 
' to try earnestly, ' or ' strenuously to resist. 5 
The adverb must stand as near as possible to 
the term which it limits, but there is no need, 
to split the part of speech and insert the mod- 
ifying word between the mangled fragments." 

"What, Mr. Editor, is the first and chief 
error against which you would warn the be- 
ginner?" 

"The error of entering journalism or of 
writing at all for a living. But I am aware 
that this advice is about as useful as telling a 
young man or woman with whom to fall in 
love. So, waiving that point, I should say 
that the most important thing to avoid was 
illegible or slovenly copy; no need to say 
why. 

"Careless penmanship and spelling are 
not the only faults that make what I call 
slovenly manuscript. Errors of arrangement, 
mixed metaphors, and all the other kindred 
abominations that are the result of careless- 
ness rather than of ignorance, come under that 
head. There is no plea that can palliate the 
sin of the verbal paretic who writes: 'He 
blew out his brains after bidding his wife 
good-by with a gun,' or 'Six hundred and 



178 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

seventy eight persons have been injured, four- 
teen fatally, by the official report of the 
World's Fair authorities. ' ' 

The editor looks so fierce as he says this 
that nobody dares to smile. The printer 
finally breaks the awkward pause by sug- 
gesting that he is reminded of the Manches- 
ter Union's famous headline over an account 
of Sunday services: "Sinful Pleasures — The 
First of a Series by the Rev. C. W. Heizer," 
and of the old tombstone in his town with the 
touching inscription on it: "Erected to the 
memory of John Phillips accidentally sho t as 
a mark of affection by his brother. 

The editor smiles grimly and continues his 
harangue : 

"Metaphors, my young friends, are among 
the test sei vants of the writer as long as he 
treats them with Christian kindness. But 
the bon vivant has rightly said that there are 
many good things which it is not safe to mix. 
Take your metaphors straight, young men , 
or not at all. Don't refer to your rival's 
scurrilous attack as a mere fleabite in the 
ocean. Don't say anything about seeing the 
footprints of an almighty hand beaming 
athwart the ocean of eternity. Forbear to 
electrify your audience, as a Berlin revolu- 
tionist did, by declaring that the chariot of 
anarchy is rolling onward and gnashing its 
teeth as it rolls. If you will insist on writ- 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 179 

ing, as a Boston editor did, about being 
'blinded by the noise of brass bands,' you 
must not expect that the ' fragrance of your 
memory will go thundering down the dim 
vista of the years.' For it won't. 

' 'For proficiency in the use of wrong words 
I commend you to Mrs. Partington and the 
bombastical pest who announces that 'reliable 
parties have inaugurated operations for the 
erection of an edifice of worship,' when he 
means to say that 'trustworthy persons have 
begun building a church. ' A long word 
where a short one would express the same 
meaning is almost as bad as a word of totally 
wrong meaning. Kedundant words are a de- 
gree worse than long words. Any word that 
can be dropped out without altering or ob- 
scuring the meaning of the sentence is an 
error. Next to the ability to see, and to tell 
what you have seen, the power to condense is 
worth most in newspaper work. The best 
writer is he who can convey the most ideas 
in the fewest syllables. 

"There is only one verbal error that is 
worse than those I have mentioned, and that 
is absolute misstatement. This is the bane 
of the newspaper. The constant recurrence 
of errors of fact shakes the confidence of the 
reader in everything that appears in print. 
These misstatements may be willful lies, or 
'fakes,' as we call them, on the part of both 



180 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

reporter and editor; or they may be concocted 
by the reporter and published by the editor 
in good faith— a case not likely to occur a 
second time with the same reporter; or they 
may be the result of unintentional error from 
the beginning. Nine -tenths of the misstate- 
ments made by newspapers are the fault of 
the persons giving the information. 

"With the lying sheet we have nothing to 
do; a paper that makes a business of 'faking' 
is as easily found out and avoided as the man 
who can not or will not tell the truth. The 
occasional publication of misinformation, 
however, is a harder matter to guard against. 
The editor has no time to confirm every dis- 
patch or story that comes to him; neither has 
the correspondent or reporter. But the wrong 
is done when the substance of floating rumors 
is dogmatically written down as fact. If a 
correspondent would honestly say in every 
such case, 'This story is told by so-and-so, 
and I have had no time to confirm it,' the 
editor could then take it for what it was 
worth and act accordingly, and the readers 
would have more faith in the paper. The 
best way to avoid errors of fact is to get your 
story, if possible, from two or three different 
sources and draw a mean from their ex- 
tremes.*' 

"But how is it possible," asks one of the 
listeners, "for a paper to report a sermon, as 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 181 

a New York journal did last week, without 
getting a single, solitary statement correct?" 

"That is plain enough; it was a 'fake' 
by some reporter who was ' soldiering' — that 
is, he made it up out of his own head, with- 
out going near the church or the preacher. 
Probably he overslept after a Saturday 
night's carousal and did not wake until 
after the sermon was delivered. He had to 
cover the assignment, so he naturally and 
coolly sat down in the privacy of his own 
room and covered it. 

"If people knew how often that sort of 
thing was done — yes, even in their pet, in- 
fallible paper — they would lose all faith in 
the press, and that would be worse than put- 
ting implicit faith in it. But most of the in- 
accuracies come through trying to cover 
events that there is no time to cover. What 
is really needed is a little more honesty and a 
little less enterprise — an improvement to be 
secured by the news - greedy public only 
through better patronage for those papers 
that steadfastly refuse to throw accuracy and 
truth to the winds in their wild rush to be 
first to tell a new story. 

"You spoke of the use of words with the 
wrong meaning, Mr. Editor; how can a per- 
son be sure he is using the right word ? " 

"The dictionary must be your bible, and 
good, writers must be your constant preachers. 



182 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

These will give you a sort of literary con- 
science that will tell you which is the best 
word for each place. If you intend to be a 
writer the words of the English language are 
to be your tools all your life, and the sooner 
you learn the proper use of them in all their 
delicate shades of meaning the sooner you 
will be likely to produce something that is 
worth reading. As new words are being 
coined every day, the study of words is a 
branch in which you will not graduate in any- 
thing less than a lifetime. The subject of 
misused words would fill volumes itself.* 

"Study the original meanings of words, 
and then you can laugh at the frequent and 
glaring advertisements that other writers 
are constantly making of their ignorance. 
You will not, for instance, abuse that handy 
little word nee, French for born, by speaking 
of 'Mrs. Smith, nee Betty Jones." However 
talented Mrs. Smith may be, and however 
precocious she may have been as a child, she 
was born a Jones and not Betty Jones. You 
will not say ' try and, ' when you mean ; try 
to, ' or ' but what, ' when you mean simply 
' but. ' The writer who stops to think never 
commits to black and white that frequent 

*"Writ'ng for the Press," a book of about ioo pages, written by 
Robert I,uce anl iu>lished by the Writer Publishing Co., Boston, 
contains a useful list of common errors of this soit to be avoided, 
besides valuable hints on other newspaper topics. I think book, 
ellers charge $i for it. 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 183 

conversational error of don't used for doesn't; 
'he don't' is intolerable to sensitive literary 
consciences. But if you want to give the 
world indubitable proof that you are a limb 
of backwoods journalism just write about 
somebody who has 'suicided.' It will give 
you away much more completely than if you 
went about calling yourself a 'journalist' in- 
stead of a modest newspaper man or woman. 

"Wrong treatment of a subject? Oh, 
that is a matter of style and policy and is a 
topic for the study of editors and copy read- 
ers rather than of beginners. ' ' 

"Do you think that book learning is worth 
all the time it takes, for one preparing to be 
a reporter ? ' ' 

"You would say so if you were a lecturer 
and quoted Tennyson's 

'Better fifty years of Europe 
Than a cycle of Cathay.' 
and then saw it printed, ' Better fifty years of 
Europe than a circus at Bombay,' or if you 
exclaimed ' Behold the martyr in a sheet of 
fire,' and the intelligent reporter echoed, ' Be- 
hold the martyr with his shirt on fire.' By 
all means get a liberal education — the more 
liberal the better. I devoutly wish all com- 
positors could take the same advice," adds the 
editor, looking askance at the printer. "Im- 
agine the feelings of the learned professor 
who wrote an article on 'Ancient Methods of 



184 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Filtration,' and found it in print with the 
heading, 'Ancient Methods of Flirtation,' or 
of the poet who wrote, ' He kissed her under 
the silent stars,' when it was translated by 
the matter-of-fact compositor into ' He kicked 
her under the cellar stairs.' " 

"Don't blame the printer," interrupts the 
representative of that craft, with some 
warmth; "score the proof-reader; he is the 
man that is paid to find mistakes. ' ' 

"It is true," says the editor, smiling rem- 
iniscentLy, "that the reporter and editor 
suffer for many of the errors that ought to 
lie at the proof-reader's door. During my 
collegiate course it was my lot to be editor- 
in-chief of the college paper. In giving an 
account of a faculty entertainment one of my 
reporters wrote, ' Professor Parsons rendered 
the Sicilian Hymn. ' The typo had set it up, 
' Professor Parsons murdered the Sicilian 
hymn.' I caught the error in reading the 
final 'revise,' but, as Professor Parsons was 
not much of a singer and rather unpopular 
withal, I thought it would be a sin to spoil so 
good a joke; sol let the error slide. When 
the paper came out the Professor was wild; 
he suspected me, and never had much use for 
me after that— except at the end of the term, 
when he got even by conditioning me in 
physics." 

"I once knew an editor," says one of the 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 185 

visitors, emboldened by the general laugh, 
' 'who wrote a profound discussion of the po- 
litical situation and headed it, ' Let Us Ex- 
plore.' He neglected to read the proof and 
it appeared in the paper, 'Let Us Explode' — 
which he immediately did — with wrath. The 
proof-reader's head was blown off." 

"Served the villain right ! " ejaculates the 
printer with a chuckle of pleasure at the 
thought of a proof-reader actually coming to 
grief. 

"The Rev. Joseph Cook," continues the 
editor, "once asked a Boston audience, 'Was 
St. Paul a dupe ? ' In the report he was 
made to propound the startling conundrum, 
' Was St. Paul a elude ? ' Miss Prances E. 
Willard once said of this same Joseph that of 
certain evils he was the uncompromising foe. 
The types rechristened him the 'uncom- 
promising Joe, ' which is not so far from the 
fact as it might have been. Of a friend who 
had died Miss Willard wrote, 'Some of us are 
like comets; she was a steady-shining star.' 
In print she was made to say, ' Some of us 
are like camels.' Her statement, 'It's only 
strength makes gentleness sublime, ' was 
made to read, 'It's only strength makes gen- 
tlemen sublime.' " 

Then one of the questioners asks how to 
become a proof-reader. 

' 'Anybody can learn the necessary]] marks 



186 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

from the sample page in the back of Web- 
ster's unabridged dictionary," is the answer; 
"but the securing of a position as proof- 
reader is the same as the securing of a clerk- 
ship in a drygoods store; it is largely a mat- 
ter of personal acquaintance and of good for- 
tune in finding a vacancy. Most of our proof- 
readers are drawn from the ranks of the 
printers, and an outsider usually has to work 
in by means of personal friendship with the 
proprietor of some large job office. Proofs 
of book and job work are usually not read in 
such a rush as attends daily paper work, and 
there is a better chance in such an establish- 
ment for a beginner. 

"But, a truce to this lecturing," concludes 
the editor, turning to his work. "Here is 
something that I would advise you to study 
religiously if you intend to write for news- 
papers. It is the sheet of instructions that 
the Chicago Tribwie gives to every reporter 
who is admitted to its staff." 

On the slip is printed the following: 

In giving dates abbreviate name of month when fol- 
lowed by the day of the month. Do not say "the 25th 
of December," but Dec. 25. 

You receive your salary (if you are in luck) Mon- 
day, not "on" Monday. You are discharged (if you are 
not in luck) Jan. 1, not "on January 1st." 

In referring to a minister use "the Rev. Mr. So- 
and- So," not "Rev. So-and-So." 

Numerals — In giving ages of persons or dimensions 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 187 

of buildings, etc., use figures; in giving sums of money 
use figures for all amounts over nine cents; in other 
cases spell out all under ] 00. Do not write a number 
in figures and then "ring" it unless you are sure that 
you are right. It is easier for a copy reader to "ring" 
a number to "spell out" than it is to cross out a ring. 
The same rule applies to abbreviations. 

Do not begin an item with "Yesterday." The event 
is more important than the date. 

Except occasionally in reports of society events 
John Jones is plain John Jones, not "Mr." John Jones. 
The same rule applies to the Smiths and others. 

The use of the word "about" should be avoided 
where possible. If you write, "There were 2,000 peo- 
ple in the hall," the round numbers are a sufficient in- 
dication that there was not an actual count of those 
present. 

In referring to locations it is sufficient to say "State 
and Madison streets," not "at the corner of State and 
Madison streets." "Corner" is allowable if you are 
giving the location exactly, as "northwest corner of 
State and Madison streets." 

"Lady" is a much misused word. "Woman" is pref- 
erable in all cases except where it appears in the name 
of an organization, as in "Board of Lady Managers." 
The mistress of a defaulter was recently referred to as 
a "beautiful lady " 

Never begin a paragraph at the bottom of a page. 
It necessitates the rewriting of a part of the paragraph 
by a copy reader. Never divide a word on the last 
line of a page, and never divide a name on the last line 
of a page. The full name should be on one page. 

Never use the word "deceased." And in obituary 
notices do not refer to "the dead man." The latter is 
allowable in police news, however. 

If a man be "well known," it is not necessary to say 



188 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

If a quotation is to have paragraphs in it, para- 
graph the beginning of it. It should be "run in" after 
a colon only when all that is included between the 
quotation marks is to be one paragraph, and not always 
then. 

It is the unexpected that "occurs." Weddings do 
notbelong to this class. 

These words are not to be used: "Deceased," "ova- 
tion," "past" where "last" can be used, and "balance" 
where it means "remainder." 

In giving the text of a sermon, observe the follow- 
ing style: "John iv., 6. Luke vii., 7." 

Don't use "Sabbath" where "Sunday" will do. 

Don't use "gentleman" when you can avoid do- 
ing so. 

Every inanimate object, as a boat, an engine, etc., is 
"it," and not "she." A ship loses "its," not "her' ; 
mast. The same rule applies to the use of pronouns in 
referring to cities, states, countries, etc. 

Time is of the greatest importance. Get your copy 
into the office at the earliest possible moment. Nothing- 
counts against a man more than dilatoriness. 

In preparing lists of names in society reports, group 
as follows: "Mr. and Mrs. JohnBink," "Mr. and Mrs. 
Henry Bultitude," and so on. Then in a separate para- 
graph write: "Mrs. Susan Noodles, Mrs. William 
Skillings," etc. Then in another paragraph, "Misses 
Ellen Flannigan, Maggie McGinty," etc. Then give 
the names of the gentlemen present, thus: "Patrick 
O'Brien, Hans Deutscher, John Johnson," etc. 

In accidents where a list of the killed or injured, or 
both, is given, run each name with the injury, etc., in 
a separate paragraph, after a short introduction to the 
list, and always give the surname first, in alphebetical 
order. Separate the list of the fatalities from that of 
the injured. Example: 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 189 

The names of those killed are given below: 

FRIES, JACOB, engineer, Ottawa, 111. 

MURRAY, JOHN L,., fireman, Peru, 111. 

The names of the injured follow: 

Denhart, Jacob, St. L,ouis, right leg crushed. 

Fitzpatrick, Barney, Moline, 111., spine bruised; internal in- 
juries. 

Herman, Jacob, Chicago, severely bruised and right arm 
broken. 

Johnson, William, Macomb, 111., fractured skull and internal 
injuries; will die. 

Don't try to write a column on one page of copy 
paper. Leave an inch at the top and bottom of each 
page and a margin on the left-hand side of three-quar- 
ters of an inch. Leave at least one-eighth of an inch 
between the lines. 

Don't be careless about proper names. Be sure you 
have them right and then go ahead plainly. If the 
name is at all unusual, go back to your school-boy days 
and "print" it. 

Don't neglect, when time permits, to read your 
copy before handing it in. And don't forget to look at 
it in print. 

Don't forget to folio your pages. 

Don't mix^your tenses. In quoting a speaker use 
present tense with quotation marks; in giving a "third 
person" report use the past tense without quotation 
marks. 

Don't say "the above;" if necessary, use "the fore- 
going." 

Don't use "party" for man, woman or person. In 
court matter "party" is allowable. 

Don't forget that one "stick" is 160 words, and that 
one column is 1,440 words, unless otherwise specified. 

Don't confound "amateur" with "novice." An ama- 
teur may be the equal of the professional in experience 
and skill; a novice is a beginner. 

Don't use "audience" for anything but an assembly 
of hearers. Spectators are present at a pantomime or 
a prize fight. 



190 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

Don't try to divide an apple ''between" more than 
two Mends; you may divide it "among" as many as 
you choose. 

*S Don't say "the marriage was consummated," if you 
mean that "the ceremony was performed." 

Don't say "don't" when you mean "doesn't." 

Don't announce that Mrs. Smith will give a lunch- 
eon "during" the week, unless she intends to feed 
guests for the next seven days. 

Don't say "gents' " furnishing store. "Gents" wear 
"pants" and eat "lunches" and "open" wine. 

Don't say "Miss Huntington was given a dinner," 
or that a dinner was given "in honor of Miss Hunting- 
ton." Say, "A dinner was given to (or for) Miss Hunt- 
ington " 

Don't say "per day," or "per year," but "a day," or 
"per diem," and "a year," or "per annum " 

Don't say "section" for "region." A section is a 
definite division of .space. 

Don't fail to discriminate between "state" and "say." 
To state means to make known specifically or to ex- 
plain particularly. 

Don't use "suicide" as a verb. A man no more "sui- 
cides" thai he "arsons" or "mayhems." 

Don't "try and" write correctly, but "try to" write 
correctly. 

Don't use "ult ," "inst.," or "prox.," when you can 
avoid it. Say last month, this month, and next month. 

Don't forget that "death is the wages of sin," and 
that "the wages of sin are death;" in other words, 
verbs agree in number with their subjects and not with 
their predicates. 

Don't use long and involved sentences. Three 
short ones are better than one long one 

Don't use "some" for "several;" e. g., "some years 
ago." 

Djn't say "since" when you mean ago;" e. g., "some 
time since" (ago). 



ERRORS OF ALL SORTS. 191 

Don't say "propose" for "purpose;" the one means 
to make an offer, the other to intend. 

Don't say "the funeral of the late Mr. Frankenstein;" 
it is to be presumed that the man is dead. 

Don't spell forward, backward, homeward, after- 
ward, downward, toward, earthward and heavenward 
with a final "s." 

Don't say "the three first," or "the three second;' 
instead, say, "the first three," and "the second three." 
Don't forget that "either — or" and "neither — nor" 
take the singular verb. 

Don't say, "differ with" a man, unless you wish to 
say that one man differs with another man from a third 
man. 

Don't say, "she looks prettily," unless you mean to 
describe her manner of gazing. Verbs of doing take 
the adverb, of seeming and being, the adjective; e. g., 
"she walks slowly," "she limps painfully," "her face 
feels rough." 

Don't forget the importance of writing legibly. By 
writing illegibly you cause annoyance to everyone 
from editor to proof-reader, and do yourself an injury. 

Don't use "as though" for "as if." You can say, 
"he walks as (he would walk) if he were lame," but 
not, "he walks as (he would walk) though he were 
lame." 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 

What is the difference between a magazine 
article and a newspaper story ? At first sight 
they are apparently much the same, but a 
closer inspection will show that they are as 
different as the two periodicals themselves. 
One is polished, permanent, and has some- 
thing of the air and dignity of a book about 
it; the other is light, careless, ephemeral, in- 
tended to entertain or instruct for a day and 
then sink into oblivion. Indeed, when we 
come to examine the details in the production 
of each, the two are seen to be not only wide- 
ly different but growing farther apart every 
day. 

The domineering, all-pervasive success of 
the daily paper is due to the marvelous print- 
ing presses that have come with the last dec- 
ade and that can turn out with ease 30,000 
complete copies an hour, and, if the paper is 
small, double that number. The growing ap- 
preciation with which the magazines are re- 
ceived is due, in a measure, to the very re- 
verse of this, for the slow presses which print 
the finest illustrations do not average more 
than 600 impressions an hour. 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 193 

As with the presses, so with the other 
points of difference. With one it is rush and 
fill; with the other it is weigh and eliminate. 
The newspaper consuming its thousands of 
articles must be rapidly edited; the magazine 
keeps from six to ten editors engaged an en- 
tire month in sifting, selecting, editing and 
arranging for illustration the eighteen or 
twenty articles that appear in one number. 
From the 8,000 or 10,000 manuscripts a year 
that pour into the cases of the editors, only 
about 200 finally reach a place in the maga- 
zine. Almost every large magazine has 
enough accepted manuscript constantly on 
hand to last several years. The newspaper 
reader glories in the vast quantity of pabulum 
that he gets for two cents; the magazine 
reader is in search of quality more than of 
quantity, and is willing to have the tons of 
manuscript sifted at his expense and to have 
only the very best laid before him. 

And even if the choicest magazine mate- 
rial be offered to a daily or weekly newspaper, 
neither of these, with its numerous issues, 
can afford to pay the prices that a prosperous 
magazine can well give. Yet the prices paid 
for magazine articles are comparatively small 
when taken on the average, because of the 
multitude of contributors and the anxiety of 
writers to get their names into magazines, 
whatever the pay. A new writer would often 



194 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

rather sell his manuscript to a magazine for 
less than to a newspaper, because he natural- 
ly prefers that his reputation should extend 
over a continent rather than over a county, 
and that his words should be put into a com- 
paratively permanent form rather than into a 
flying sheet that is to be buried beneath a 
new generation of its kind before its birthday 
sun has set. Of these facts magazine pub- 
lishers, like other business men, take more 
or less advantage at the expense of the un- 
known writer. Those who are famous can of 
course command almost any price for their 
work.* 

Illustration has come to be almost as im- 
portant a branch of magazine work as the 
letter-press itself. The artist, if he can do 
the work at all, gets rather better pay than 
the writer, because there are not so many of 
him. Not all kinds of articles will admit of 
illustration, but as a rule anything of a de- 
scriptive nature, whether for a newspaper or 
a magazine, will stand a better chance of ac- 
ceptance if it be accompanied with sketches 
or photographs — preferably the latter, unless 
you are an expert and understand the special 

*John Brisbiu Walker, publisher of the Cosmopolitan , recently 
claimed to have paid $300 for a single-page poem and $450 for only 
three illustrations. The average price for small poems in the 
prominent magazines of the country might be placed perhaps at 
$15, and that of first-class prose articles at from $50 to $75. During 
the brief period in which W. D. Howells was editor of the Cosmo- 
politan he was paid at the rate of $15,000 a year. 



MA GAZINES A ND NO VELS. 195 

needs of the business. An unmounted photo- 
graph is better than one that has been mount- 
ed. Drawings or unmounted prints must 
never be folded and should be mailed with 
cardboard on each side of them. 

While we are on the subject, it may be 
well to touch upon a few points that should 
be kept in mind by those intending to draw 
for newspaper illustration. The essentials 
for this work are talent, perfectly black ink, 
and perfectly white paper. The drawing 
should be at least one -third larger than the 
illustration is to be in the paper or magazine, 
for in transferring it to metal it is desirable to 
reduce it. Allowance must be made for this 
reduction in the shading; too much is worse 
than none at all. 

As invention has followed invention, and 
especially since the introduction of delicate 
half-tone illustrations in magazine work, the 
printing of the magazine and the printing of 
the newspaper have grown to be entirely 
separate branches of the art. The inventor 
has improved the magazine press in rollers 
and in impression, but not yet in speed. The 
speed in this work was greater forty years 
ago than it is now — and a glance at an old 
periodical will indicate why. 

Magazine articles may be divided broad- 
ly into those of fact and those of fiction. 
Descriptive, biographical, argumentative or 



196 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

other articles dealing with facts or opinions 
are not essentially different from the news- 
paper special article in form and general 
plan of treatment; only, they are worked out 
more carefully and elaborately and do not 
necessarily deal with present-day subjects. 
On these, therefore, little more help can be 
given in these pages. With the writing of 
fiction we shall deal a little more at length, 

Newspaper work presents the easiest point 
of access for the literary beginner, but fiction 
writing, if so be one have the talent, is the 
surer avenue to pecuniary success. Not that 
it is always a gold mine, even for a good 
writer after he or she has made a reputation; 
but it often is quite remunerative, and is more 
so, at any rate, than that of any other class 
of writers, unless we except the few suc- 
cessful dramatists of the day. 

Short stories are the rage just at present, 
and any writer who can strike a popular chord 
in that line will have more than he or she can 
do to fill the orders that will.come unsolicited. 
The fact that not one in a hundred ever 
strikes this popular chord does not alter the 
fact. This, moreover, seems to be the legiti- 
mate and the straightest road to success as a 
novelist, though a good short-story writer is 
not necessarily a good novel writer. Never- 
theless, the short story and the long novel 
are essentially the same and require similar 
materials aud similar treatment. 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 197 

' 'If you are going to be a story writer, ' ' 
says James Lane Allen, "take American sub- 
jects and confine yourself to a particular lo- 
cality; there is a craze for short stories nowa- 
days, and the more thoroughly American you 
can make them the more likely they will be 
to find favor with publishers. ' ' 

Mr. Allen, it may be remarked, has con- 
fined himself entirely to Kentucky stories. 
As he is, unlike most writers, a man who has 
analyzed his literary processes, it may not be 
amiss to reproduce here a portion of an inter- 
esting conversation that I recently had with 
him on the subject of magazine fiction, 
"What do you mean by an author's confining 
himself to a particular locality?" I asked. 

"I mean that the prevailing type of story 
depicts local life — life as it is in New England, 
for instance, or in Georgia or Kentucky. Al- 
most every successful writer is working in 
some definite locality. Cable, you know, is 
devoting himself to Louisiana; Harris is at 
work in Georgia, Miss Murfree in Tennessee, 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelphs and Sarah Orne Jew- 
ett in New England, Richard Harding Davis 
in New York City, and so on to the end of the 
list — with exceptions, of course. And all 
these local literatures, put together, are mak- 
ing for our country a national literature — 
something that it never had before. 

"Yes," continued the Kentuckian, "choose 



198 S7EPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

a particular community, and out of its life 
glean its peculiar types of character, its his- 
torical romance, its scenes and sayings, and 
work them into your plot with such art that 
the reader must recognize the portrait if he 
ever saw the original. Take the most im- 
portant topic that you can find in your com- 
munity, and clothe it in the imagery that is 
peculiar to the place. It is the local color 
that we want. The story must belong some- 
where. 

"With all this, however, your picture 
must be true to human nature; it must be uni- 
versal, yet peculiar, characteristic. You have 
the old and the perpetually new, combined; 
the same old heart, the same old passions, the 
same old loves and yearnings and regrets, yet 
in a new and peculiar setting. 

"Don't forget that you are after beauty — 
as much of it as you can possibly get. Study 
art. Study the masters of the short story and 
of the novel; these are your only teachers." 

After remarking with wonder upon the 
fact that there was no master's studio to 
which a literary apprentice could go to learn 
his art, he expressed the opinion that the time 
would come when all the chief colleges would 
have chairs endowed for the instruction of 
writers of every kind Then I asked what in* 
thought should be the chief aim of a writer of 
fiction. 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 199 • 

"The delineation of character," was his 
reply. "There must be something in every 
story that is significant — that helps; but the 
chief power of the writer lies in character 
drawing. Around that centers the highest 
interest of the reader. There is, of course, 
the interest of plot — that is curiosity; and 
there are humor, pathos, instruction, and the 
various other sources of interest; but the nov- 
elist has always before him that chief end — 
to depict character and the effects of one 
character upon another. " 

"Then he must study people?" 

"Always and every vvhere. The average 
man does not do this; but when one becomes 
a writer one soon learns it, and one's insight 
into character becomes almost supernaturally 
keen.' 1 

"Should a writer study out his whole plot 
before he begins to write?" 

"Yes; the first thing is to know exactly 
what you want to do with your subject. You 
must see the end of your story from the be- 
ginning. You must sit within your subject 
as within a room. As your story -people take 
shape in your thought, you make their ac- 
quaintance by degrees, and learn to live in 
them, to feel with them, and finally to speak 
for them. Then writing becomes a necessity 
— a duty — the most terrible of duties; and, 
almost unconsciously, you work your own. 
conceptions of duty into your characters." 



200 STEPS INTO JO URN A L ISM. 

"Do you think that newspaper writing is 
good training for the novelist's work?" 

"No; I believe it will ultimately spoil a 
good novelist. At least I have had friends 
tell me that they had been permanently in- 
jured by their newspaper training. " 

"How so?" 

' 'One reason is that the reporter must al- 
ways be straining after speed and quantity 
rather than after perfection of form and dra- 
matic habits of thought. But the main ob- 
jection to journalism as a preliminary training 
for fiction writing is that the newspaper ri- 
gidly cuts oat all romantic sentiment. Now, 
all true literature is bathed in sentiment. 
The author tells not only what he sees and 
thinks, but also how he feels toward his 
characters, whose imaginary words . he re- 
ports. He weaves his own emotions into his 
story. This is the very thing that the re- 
porter is forbidden to do, and long training 
under the remorseless blue pencil stamps out 
of a man or woman the very faculty that is 
most precious to the story writer. " 

The enthusiasm of the artist kindled in 
the speaker's eyes as the conversation turned 
to the subject of color in descriptive writing, 
and he confidentially gave this bit of his own 
experience : 

"A friend of mine — a painter — had just 
finished reading some little thing that I had 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 201 

succeeded in having published in the Century. 

" ' What do you think of it? ' I asked him. 
4 Tell me frankly what you like and what you 
don't like. ' 

"'It's interestingly told, dramatic, pol- 
ished, and all that, Allen, ' was his reply; 
4 but, why in the world did you neglect such 
an opportunity to drop in some color here, 
and at this point, and there? ' 

"It came over me like that," said the 
Kentuckian, snapping his fingers with a 
graceful wave of the hand, " that words indi- 
cating colors can be manipulated by the 
writer just as pigments are by the painter. 
I never forgot the lesson. And now, when I 
describe a landscape or a house or a costume, 
I try to put it into such words that an artist 
can paint the scene from my words. 

"This art of landscape painting in fiction 
is a comparatively new thing," added Mr. 
Allen; " the earlier novelists had not learned 
it. " 

" The dialect story — " 

" Is dead. The negro dialect story, espe- 
cially, seems to be a thing of the past. The 
best story of this sort would be likely to go 
begging for a publisher. The mountaineer 
dialect seems to be about to share the same 
fate. This change may be only a passing 
whim of fashion, but there is, at any rate, no 
ignoring it." 



202 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

As the conversation drifted upon methods 
of work, Mr. Allen remarked that he usually 
confined his working day to four hours of 
each forenoon. 

" Isn't that rather a short day? " I asked. 

" Four hours with the pen I call a long, 
hard day's work — all that a man can stand 
the year round and not lose his health." 

" How do you spend your afternoons? " 

' ' In reading, or in talking with some one 
who has a bit of information that I need, or 
in visiting some spot that has a story in it; in 
short, my afternoons are usually spent in col- 
lecting materials. Besides, a writer must 
keep abreast of the whole movement of liter- 
ature; and he must study the particular mag- 
azine to which he wishes to contribute, in 
order to know its spirit — its standard. Study 
the magazine — that is one of the first elements 
of a contributor's success." 

"What have you found to be the chief 
reasons for which editors reject stories? " 

" The first or rather the surface cause for 
which the beginner is likely to have his story 
returned as ' not available ' is careless me- 
chanical preparation of the manuscript." 

" Do you refer to illegible writing? 

"Yes; and to imperfect punctuation and 
careless spelling and neglect to leave the 
proper margins; young writers are prone to 
crowd their lines too close together, or to 



MA GAZINES A ND NO VELS. 203 

write on big foolscap sheets, or to roll their 
copy, or to divulge greenness by some other 
bit of carelessness. When an editor gets 
such a manuscript he says to himself, ' That 
is the work of a novice; I have no time to 
waste on it now, ' and it is thrown aside for 
something that promises better." 

''But, suppose the manuscript is type- 
written and correct in every detail? " 

" Then the editor's objection may be based 
on the weakness and insufficiency of the ma- 
terial used in the story. Or the execution 
and the material may be all right, and the art 
of the author — that highest of all require- 
ments — may be at fault. 

"Again," continued Mr. Allen, "these 
three qualifications may all be there, and yet 
the story may be clothed in a style that is out 
of fashion, as dialect talk would be just now. 
The tale, too, may pass muster on all these 
points and yet not be suited to a particular 
magazine because it would be antagonistic to 
a certain class of readers. 

"Lastly, a story may be perfect of its 
kind and may be entirely suited to the maga- 
zine and to the tastes of the editor, and yet, 
at the particular time when it is submitted, it 
may not fit into the plans of the managers. 

"When you send a manuscript to a maga- 
zine you will sooner or later receive one of 
four answers: First, and least desirable, an 



204 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

engraved note rejecting the story without 
any why or wherefore; second, a personal 
letter declining it and telling the reason; 
third, a letter suggesting certain modifications 
in the story and intimating that it may be ac- 
ceptable with these changes; fourth, a check. " 

""What do you think is the most trying 
time in the career of a young author? " 

"The period of suspense after he has 
signed his manuscript and sent it off to the 
editor; then begins the anxiety and the wait- 
ing; he begins to think of so many places 
where he could improve that story if only he 
had the copy back; he waits and hopes and 
fears until he is sick — and when the editor's 
answer does come it is not likely to cure him. 

"Whatever you do," added Mr. Allen, 
dropping into a tone of advice, " don't make 
a fuss; keep perfectly quiet. Don't write the 
editor a long letter when you send your story; 
he doesn't want your criticisms on it. And 
don't get impatient and write asking why he 
doesn't publish it, or whether he received it, 
or what he thinks of it. You may rest as- 
sured of one thing: the editor is ©very whit 
as anxious to get a good story as you are to 
give it; so, whether he has ever heard your 
name before or not, he will at least read 
enough of your manuscript to convince him 
that it does not contain what he is seeking." 

Here, then, is an author who regards story 



MA GAZINES AND NO VELS. 205 

writing in the light of an art. But, even if 
fiction be an art, the rules of which are teach- 
able, it by no means follows that success can 
be secured without the inborn genius which 
every true novelist possesses. The story 
teller must have the gift of observation; he 
must acquire the art of description; he must 
exercise suppression and selection; his char- 
acters must be drawn clearly; he must strive 
without ceasing to attain a pure style. Wil- 
liam T. Stead says that no reputation worth 
having can be made without attending to 
style, and that there is no style, however 
rugged, which cannot be made beautiful by 
attention and pains. 

In this connection it is interesting to note 
Robert Louis Stevenson's view of the subject. 
He declares that the secret of success in 
literature is elbow grease. "I can always 
tell, ' ' he says, ' ' when an author does not 
write over and over again. If a man has 
every word and every sentence and every 
subject in the right order, and has no other 
gift, he will be a great writer. ' ' The valua- 
tion which Mr. Stevenson sets upon industry 
and concentration is perhaps not too high, 
but it is idle to deny that these must be joined 
to another quality which he modestly neglects 
to mention — the quality vaguely and various- 
ly termed aptitude, talent, genius. It would 
be absurd, for instance, to say that Macaulay 



.206 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

owed his literary eminence solely to the fact 
that he wrote ' ' over and over again. ' ' Labor 
is the superstructure of success, but it must 
rest on the right foundation or it will be in 
vain. "Know thyself" should precede "La- 
bor conquers all things. " 

These rules, drawn up and published by 
Walter Besant a few years ago, are worthy 
the attention of every one who aspires to this 
field of labor to which so many imagine them- 
selves called and where so few are actually 
chosen: 

Practice writing something original every day. 

Cultivate the habit of observation. 

Work regularly at certain hours. 

Read no rubbish. 

Aim at the formation of style. 

Endeavor to be dramatic. 

A great element of dramatic skill is selection. 

Avoid the sin of writing about a character. - 

Never attempt to describe any kind of life except 
that with which you are familiar. 

Learn as much as you can about men and women. 

For the sake of forming a good natural style, and 
acquiring a command of language, write poetry. 

"As regards style," Mr. Besant once 
wrote to a literary aspirant — a lawyer's clerk 
in a little country town — "it will be a long 
time before you acquire one of your own. 
But go on. Write every day something, and 
read only the best authors. Thackeray, of 
course, is one of the best. Kingsley also I 
would recommend. Scott, also, of course 



MA GAZINES AND NO VELS. 207 

You should also read George Meredith, who 
is a great artist, though he lacks tender- 
ness. " 

As one of Mr. Besant's rules rightly im- 
plies, real, living men and women are the one 
abiding and exhaustless source of interest. 
The day of the old-fashioned fable or fairy 
tale is past. Grown-up people of this day 
take but little interest in genies or griffins or 
goblins. They tire quickly even of Jules 
Verne and Rider Haggard. What the great 
majority of English-speaking readers want is 
a portrayal of human life. Some of us want 
our humanity idealized a little before its 
photograph is taken; others want the pic- 
tures realistic — dirty work-clothes, low-lived 
thoughts, and all. That is a matter of taste. 
Just now the realists seem to be in the as- 
cendency, but this is no proof that they will 
always remain there. The chief fact for us, 
as writers, to note is the fact that from the 
myriad . relations of human life, and from 
these almost alone, we must draw our ma- 
terials. A description of an arctic glacier or 
a tropical forest may' be ifever so vivid, but 
if it has no human life near it it is uninterest- 
ing, desolate, dead. 

The novel, then, consists of choice por- 
tions of the great human world-circus trans- 
lated into words, much as a painter might 
translate them into colors. A great novel 



J f 



208 STEPS INTO JO URNAL ISM. 

can not be written in monotonous prose, like 
an essay; a photograph can not be great, but 
a painting can. So a novel is plain prose 
translated into conversation, description, his- 
torical statement, philosophic comment, dra- 
matic situations — all the colors into which 
the writer can dip his pen. I believe that 
the novel is the prose of real life translated, 
just as poetry is, only into a different lan- 
guage. And a great deal of this knack of 
translation can be acquired, if the pupil has 
a good imagination and sufficient love for the 
literary art to make him persevere. Try it 
some time on a plain newspaper paragraph 
such as you see every day. Take this for 
instance : 

"John Simpson and. Michael Flannigan, two railroad 
laborers, quarreled yesterday morning, and Flannigan 
killed Simpson with a coupling' pin. The murderer is 
in jail. He says Simpson provoked him and dared 
him to strike." 

There you have it in plain prose. Now 
take your imagination for a lexicon and begin 
to translate. Perhaps the new version will 
read like this: 

" 'Taint none o' yer business how often I go to see 
the girl." 

" Ef Oi ketch yez around my Nora's house agin 
Oi'll break a hole in yer shneakin' head, d'ye moind 
thot ! " 

"You braggin' Irish coward, you haint got sand 
enough in you to come down oft'n that car and say that 
to my face." 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 209 

It was John Simpson, a yard switchman, who spoke 
the taunt to a section hand. A moment more and 
Michael Flannigan stood on the ground beside him. 
There was a murderous fire in the Irishman's eyes, 
and in his hand he held a heavy coupling pin. 

"Tut! tut! Mike: throw away the iron and play 
fair. You kin wallup him ! " cried the rest of the 
gang. 

"He's a coward; he dassn't hit me,"' came the 
wasp-like taunt of the switchman. "Let him alone,, 
fellers; his girl's give him the shake, and — " 

Those were the last words John Simpson ever 
spoke. The murderous coupling pin had descended 
like a scimitar and crushed his skull. 

An awed silence fell upon the little group as they 
raised the fallen man and saw that he was dead. 

"Ye'll be hangin' fur this, Mikey, me bye," whis- 
pered one of his horrified companions as the police 
dragged off the unresisting murderer. 

" Oi don't care,"' came the sullen reply, with a dry 
sob that belied it. Then, with a look of unutterable 
hatred and a nod toward the white, upturned face of 
his enemy, he added under his breath, "He'll niver 
git her now." 

My translation may be rather free, but it 
will serve to illustrate the point. Such writ- 
ing may be fiction, every word of it, and yet 
be as true as anything ever written, if it rep- 
resents human nature aright. 

The fiction writer must be on the watch for 
dramatic situations and must study to create 
them; they are almost as necessary to him as 
they are to the play-writer. The dramatic 
presentation of a story is often its strongest 
feature. A novel is like a play; it may be 



210 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

separated into acts, scenes, situations, dia- 
logues and climaxes, with chapter headings 
instead of drop curtains to mark the main 
divisions. 

This is a rushing age, and people want 
novels with movement in them. Business- 
like brevity and artistic beauty — to unite 
these two qualities is the difficult task set 
before the novelist. It is hard to lay down 
any rules for so independent a creature as 
the fiction writer, but this I believe will hold 
at the present day: Strictly avoid all matter 
that does not advance the story. The his- 
torical essays that Victor Hugo sandwiched 
between the chapters of his thrilling ' ' Les 
Miserables " are no longer popular. Indeed, 
the whole spirit of the age seems to be one 
of growing aversion for anything that might 
be suspected of being hard reading. 

In choosing your field of work as a writer 
never forget that the greatest interest you 
can arouse is the human interest. A descrip- 
tive article can never command the attention 
of a narrative. A village paper will find 
more readers for the story of a fight in the 
local corner-grocery than for the most elo- 
quent description of sunrise in the Alps that 
was ever penned. Human nature is essen- 
tially gregarious and is always intensely curi- 
ous to see or hear what the other fellow is 
doing or saying. You can notice it on the 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 211 

crowded street; how quickly a crowd gathers 
if a man or woman falls to the pavement, or 
if a pick-pocket is caught and hauled away 
in the patrol wagon ! And how swiftly the 
rumor flies on the tongues of the gossips if a 
scandal is whispered against a neighbor, or 
if Jones is in danger of financial failure ! 

Here is a fact that the writer should real- 
ize from the first. A Herbert Spencer will 
have his readers, but they will be few com- 
pared with the throngs that daily devour the 
prize-fight page of the newspaper; an Audu- 
bon or a Coues will have his disciples, but 
they will be a handful compared with the 
jostling multitudes that flock to the variety 
theaters to see enacted the joys or sorrows 
or wickedness of human life; the sermons of 
a Phillips Brooks will find their readers, 
but the number thereof will be infinitesimal 
compared with the readers of Zola's novels. 
It is not the frivolity or wickedness of man's 
heart so much as it is the all-pervasiveness 
of human interest and curiosity that give the 
novel, good or bad, its present enormous 
power. It will be well, therefore, for every 
writer to take this element into account from 
the start and come in touch with this great 
force — human interest in the fellow indi- 
vidual — as often as possible. 

Keep familiar with good writing — espe- 
cially of the kind you are aiming at. Don't 



212 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

imitate it if yon don't want to be called a 
plagiarist, bnt do study and analyze it. When 
you strike a passage that moves you, stop 
and find out the secret of its power. Read 
Carlyle and see how an Oxford -graduated 
polar bear might write with the blunt end 
of a crowbar. Read Ruskin and learn what 
it is to be earnest, satirical, poetic, quaint, 
and yet altogether elegant. 

An old rule often quoted by our literature 
professor at college was : ' ' Compose with 
fury, correct with phlegm. " In other words, 
write as swiftly as your thoughts will carry 
j^ou ; then go over the manuscript again and 
correct it with cool, deliberate judgment. If 
the first draft appears too informal and con- 
versational, put a little more starch into it; if 
your sentences appear too much coiffe, go 
back and rumple up their hair. 

Beginners, who always tend to revel in the 
editorial "we,'" will be disappointed to learn 
that this is no longer good form and is avoided 
as much as possible, by all the best news- 
papers, even in editorials. It was a stilted 
solecism that will be just as well buried. 
Many papers make it a strict rule to avoid 
both "I" and "we,'' and to use some other 
form of expression. This is likely to force 
the writer into overworking the word "it " 
and into importing that uncomfortable Galli- 
cism, ••one" where he means "I." One ex- 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 213 

treme is as bad as the other, but as it is the 
style at present to avoid the first person in 
unsigned articles it is best for the beginner to 
conform himself thereto. 

If you are writing over your own signa- 
ture and want to refer to yourself , say "I," 
and not " the scribe," or " your humble ser- 
vant," or any of the rest of that breed of 
mock-modest circumlocutions. If you are 
writing the usual anonymous newspaper arti- 
cle, avoid the first person entirely — except, 
of course, in interviews — and if it becomes 
necessary to refer to yourself say "the re- 
porter," or the " Daily News representative." 
It is a fact worthy of note that the New York 
Herald allows its reporters to use the "I'' 
even in its ordinary anonymous news col- 
umns. There is no doubt that this sensible 
practice will some day be universal. 

Use the Saxon rather than the Latin de- 
rivatives, as a rule, and choose the shortest 
word that means what you want to say; but 
don't be afraid to throw in a long word if 
that treatment is more impressive or funnier 
or obviates an unpleasant repetition. And 
when a circumlocution will do what a plain 
statement will not — namely, draw attention to 
an old theme— use it. Dress your doll for 
the season; and when its garments are soiled 
change them. Put it into boys' clothes if 
people are tired of seeing it in petticoats; 



214 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

and make it into a crying baby when as a 
grown-up lady in a trained ball-gown it has 
ceased to draw. 

I can not tell you what to put into a story 
to make it sought of the multitude; but I can 
tell you where to get the material that will 
do it. Study the people in real life about 
you; jot down striking bits of conversation 
overheard in the cars, sketches of odd situa- 
tions or queer characters, bright answers 
made by children in the school room, and 
novel ideas that will come at times unbidden 
into your own thoughts. Treasure them in a 
notebook kept for the purpose; they are so 
many nuggets which, when the time comes, 
you may be able to melt down into one big 
golden brick that will catch the eye of the 
world. Such materials, fused together in 
the furnace of inspiration by a strong mind 
that is imbued with an all-pervading love for 
art or humanity, or both, can not fail to win 
the hearts of readers, for they are the best 
and truest materials to be found in the world. 

A certain oracle informs us that we must 
"use forcible and appropriate terms and ut- 
ter them with conviction." That is like my 
mother's advice, " Now, don't be shy; adopt 
an easy and pleasing manner, especially to- 
ward ladies. " Or it is like telling a beginner 
on the piano to play ''crisply, evenly and 
correctly, and bring out a faultless tone." In 



MA GAZINES AND NO VELS. 21 5 

other words, be perfect instantly, and success 
is yours. So far as I have been able to ob- 
serve, these "forcible, appropriate terms, ut- 
tered with conviction, " that we are advised 
to use, represent for most of us the dazzling 
apex of our fondest hopes. It will do no 
harm, however, to keep our eyes always 
turned in that direction. 

The novel of today is a series of pictures 
rather than a narrative. As far as possible 
the pictures and characters should tell the 
story, and not the author. Neither do the 
characters go about with placards on their 
breasts: "I am the hero," "I am the vil- 
lain." The reader as a rule does not wish to 
know the author's opinion of the characters 
in so much cold type. This is what Walter 
Besant means when he refers to the sin of 
writing about a character. We are tired, too, 
of those story people who are introduced to 
us bit by bit, with the brains carefully dis- 
sected and labeled for identification. The 
analytical novel that devotes a chapter to 
telling just what principle of moral affinity 
made Angelina love Edwin more than Archi- 
bald is not the novel that will wear out its 
plates with printing extra editions. 

We like novels in which we get acquainted 
with the characters just as we do with per- 
sons in real life. If the dashing cavalier has 
a heart as black as his moustache, the reader 



216 STEPS INTO JO URN A L ISM. 

does not care to be informed of the fact on 
the first page; he prefers to discover it when 
the scoundrel assassinates his rival. We do 
not want talk about the characters; what we 
want is the talk of the characters themselves. 
Men and women thus depicted, if drawn by a 
skilled hand that can make their words and 
acts seem natural, have an intense reality; 
the reader feels that they must exist, even 
though they be of an unfamiliar type. 

The true characters are presented to us as 
people are introduced in the drawing-room 
and in the street. From their friends and 
enemies we learn something of their excel- 
lences and failings; and we perceive what 
they do and say; that is all. We can puzzle 
our brains to discover their thoughts and 
motives, just as we can in the case of the peo- 
ple we meet every day. We make their ac- 
quaintance by degrees, and love or despise 
them at the end, according to their works. 

Three things the writer must never forget: 
He must feel what he writes, he must know 
what he writes, and he must be what he 
writes. The stream cannot rise higher than 
the source. The author cannot depict a char- 
acter with nobler qualities than he himself 
feels stirring within him at the moment when 
he writes. He cannot make his readers laugh 
or weep, aspire or love, pity or hate, unless 
he has felt Hie same emotions himself. 



MAGAZINES AND NOVELS. 217 

"What ! " cries some incredulous and hor- 
rified critic; "must I be a villain before I can 
depict a villain ? " 

Certainly; you must be your villain, so 
far as thinking his evil thoughts is concerned; 
you must have the possibility of all his wick- 
edness in your heart. You can never draw a 
more villainous villain than you yourself 
could be jf you turned the whole strength 
of your character into that channel of action. 

Did you ever think of the fact that you 
can look with pleasure on a picture a hun- 
dred times after all that can be told you about 
that picture has grown stale and wearisome ? 
That gives us a clue to the reason why the 
work of the reporter and of the novelist will 
never go out of fashion. Their task is draw- 
ing pictures of life, the most interesting of 
all pictures, and readers will never tire of 
them, no matter how often repeated, if only 
they be drawn with truth and artistic ability. 
It is an art worthy a life's work to learn 
aright. 

Fiction reigns supreme in literature today. 
To be a great novelist, therefore, means to 
be a great literary artist, honored through- 
out the civilized world. I would rather be 
able to depict such a magnificent figure as 
Jean Valjean, or such a clear-cut, living char- 
acter as Becky Sharp, than be able to paint 
a Sistine Madonna. It would mean more in 
this age of the world. 



MISSION OF THE PRESS. 

In conclusion, let us take a brief glimpse 
of the press from the point of view of the 
idealist. Prom the prosaic work of dissec- 
tion let us turn to the more inspiring view of 
the press as a whole. We have seen what 
the newspaper is; now let us dream a mo- 
ment of what we would have it be. 

The scepter that rules mankind — who 
holds it ? Por ages brute strength gripped 
it in its teeth. But the strong, white arm of 
religion wrested it away. Kings came. All 
nations bowed under a more-than-Russian 
despotism. Illiterate centuries rolled over 
the earth like fogs. But from those clouds 
behold a great, shining hand thrust forth. 
See how it snatches away the scepter from 
mitred pope and crowned czar. There are 
giants in these days — giants greater than 
Hercules or Goliath of Gath. Strongest 
among the strong are two modern Titans — 
Confined Steam and Pree Thought. Steam 
power is mighty. Brain power alone is 
mightier. Yoke the two together and you 
move the world. Yoke the two together and 
you have the steam press. 



MISSION OF THE PRESS. 219 

In yonder metropolis by the sea, under 
tonight's darkness, a very miracle will be 
worked. Quick brains, nimble fingers, the 
electric spark, powerful machinery— all will 
combine to write the history of today — a 
volume in a night ! Each letter will be beau- 
tifully engraved in metal and copied a hun- 
dred thousand times before the sun shall have 
regilded the mastheads in the harbor. 

Wonderful the press is and ever will be. 
Mightier it is than a whole race of giants. 
But good — is it good? Daily papers and 
weekly magazines, dime novels and dollar 
• books — put all its parts together, and can the 
press be called a benefactor ? 

Think of the columns of unwholesome 
gossip- it pours forth every hour. Think 
how full it is of crude, undigested thoughts — 
words "without form and void." Think of 
these volumes written in a single night or 
day; are they not mushrooms ? Do they not 
lack the strong fiber that builds history ? 
Think how glibly the printing press tells 
abroad all evil — how it instructs the young 
and vicious in crime and murder — how it 
teaches base thoughts to grow into base . 
deeds. Think of the red-backed, red-minded 
books that lure, siren-like, from the cheap 
shop window. Is not such literature a muck- 
heap, where licentious men may sow licen- 
tious thoughts — seeds whose toadstool growth 
is black with the poison that kills souls ? 



220 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

And the daily press — does it not invade 
the privacy of the home and drag forth into 
the sneering gaze of the world the tenderest 
secrets of the sin-sick or the broken heart ? 
Think on these things and say if you dare 
that the steam press is not indeed an iron 
press. Think, too, how it has overturned 
governments, mocked at the earnest things 
of life, shaken men's faith in God and man. 
Think how it acquaints the soul with a thous- 
and new griefs — a thousand new temptations. 
Think how it pours into the delicate vial of 
each single human heart the sorrow and sin 
and agony of the world. Think, and say ■ 
whether we may not impeach our boasted 
lightning press in the name of human wel- 
fare and happiness — whether we may not 
pass upon it sentence of condemnation, and 
call its name anathema maranatha ! 

But, hold ! History tells us our remote 
ancestors were a horde of robbers, whose 
highest ambition was to find a Rome to sack. 
What has raised our aims ? What voices 
have been calling through the centuries, 
' ' Look up ! Look up ! " Our forefathers 
"were vassals and serfs, bound as chattels to 
the land. Why are we not slaves ? Who 
snatched the stolen power from kings ? Who 
tore away the clouds that hid the star of 
liberty — dear, loving eye — that looks down 
upon us from the free blue ? Why is there 



MISSION OF THE PRESS. 221 

a glad laugh in our hearts as we tell each 
other, of a Christmas holiday, that God is 
good ? It was not always so. Peer into the 
frightening gloom of the Dark Ages. See 
human thought lying motionless — a corpse. 
That heavy pall over it is ignorance. What 
angel lifted that pall and breathed a soul into 
that clay ? What has killed the blight of 
superstition, that cursed, even where the 
sweet dew of Christianity had blessed ? 
Whence this great light that sends the ghoul, 
witchcraft, slinking to its cave, and dazzles 
the night birds of religious persecution so 
that they dare not flap their pestilential wings 
or croak ? Why has the weed, intolerance, 
wilted, and the flower, love, budded and al- 
most bloomed ? What echoed the swelling 
hiss of Christendom against slavery, until it 
died for very shame ? 

What, if not the press ? 

These and a thousand more blessings it 
has cherished and fondled and battled for and 
suffered for, that it might lay them all at our 
feet. Invent the printing press, and democ- 
racy is inevitable. Kings may burn books 
and scatter the ashes to the winds; they are 
only sowing a myriad seeds to bring forth 
myriadfold. The tyrant may stamp upon the 
fire of freedom kindled beneath his iron heel; 
the press but blows the sparks into his face 
to burn the deeper. Mind moves rocks and 



222 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

seas; but the press sways the world of 
thought itself. Gutenberg has found the ful- 
crum that Archimedes sought, and strong 
minds are moving the world up into a clearer 
light. 

Each bit of rag paper, with its ink-spots, 
is a rift in the leaden cloud of ignorance 
through which man may look up into the 
heavenly world of all- knowledge. New rifts, 
one by one, the earnest writers of the world 
are making in those clouds. Little by little 
the press is letting through the mystic rays 
of thought. Before these rays the exhala- 
tions of primeval ignorance that once 
shrouded the very mountain-tops of humanity 
are vanishing like sun-chased mists, and even 
the dark valleys and gloomy gorges of the 
human world are awaking and singing in the 
warmth of that glorious dawn. 

The new — we all love it. The hope for 
some new thing is the pillar of fire leading 
us through the wilderness of time. The 
newspaper — the paper full of new things — 
should be manna for our mental hunger. But 
shall the press tell everything men say or do? 
God forbid! Too much in man's heart is des- 
perately wicked. Shall it, then, ignore crime 
and degradation? Ah, no. The newspaper 
that ceased to tell of human faults and evil 
would be a sealed page — a closed book. The 
secular paper has a sacred mission; but it 



MISSION OF THE PRESS. 223 

must deliver its message in the people's own 
tongue. Its pictures must be lifelike, or they 
will hang with their faces to the wall. A 
likeness without shadow is no likeness. The 
press is a mirror, in which humanity sees its 
own image, and the blemishes reflected there 
will not out by breaking the glass. Make 
men perfect tonight, and the newspaper will 
be perfect tomorrow. But, no cloistered, In- 
quisition-gagged, Utopian press for the peo- 
ple of today! They'll none of it. The way 
to raise men's eyes from evil is not to close 
one's own, but to throw upon vice the glare 
of its own horrid light — not to paint only vir- 
tue, but to paint in its beauty all that there is. 
Like Wordsworth's ideal woman, the press 
should be 

" — not too high nor good 
For human nature's daily food, 
And yet a spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light." 

But shame upon those false pens that 
make the worse appear the better reason! 
Shame upon those false artists that throw the 
high lights upon the darkest deeds, and use 
virtue only for a background!. Out upon 
those soulless sheets that sneer at honor and 
purity — that treat crime as a peepshow and 
blasphemy as a joke! Is there no everlast- 
ing truth? Is there no fierce death-grapple 
between might and right ? No red flag of an- 



224 STEPS INTO JO URNALISM. 

archy to furl forever? Who, if not the press, 
shall beat back Ignorance, with her bats and 
owls? Who break the racks and gibbets of 
unjust power? Who give the lie to those who 
see the world bloodshot through passion's 
eyes, or jaundiced through the yellow gog- 
gles of greed gorged sick on fellow beings' 
souls? 

Here are the mission fields of the press, 
and here, despite its faults, it is at work. 
Each year it carries some of the precious 
Christian brother-love to earth's uttermost 
tribes; each day its ministering leaves a few 
less folds where the ' ' hungry sheep look up 
and are not fed." Its warning words are 
teaching men not to waste their lives and 
burn out their souls with alcoholic flame. 
The true-hearted element of the press is puri- 
fying the atmosphere all through the body 
politic, and is calling for clear heads and clean 
hands in high places. It is teaching justice 
and mercy and temperance. The sound of 
its coming is sweet in men's ears, for the bur- 
dens it bears are glad tidings, and the gifts it 
scatters are life and light. 

Railroad and telegraph have made the 
printed page a mighty Ear of Dionysius— a 
whispering gallery where may be heard all 
the noise and music of the world. But the 
press has more to do than passively to echo 
the clanking of wheels and spindles or the 



MISSION OF THE PRESS. 225 

voices of politicians and parties. It can be 
more than an echo. It can also be a voice. 
The humblest sheet can and not seldom 
does speak words that make unjust govern- 
ments tremble. The country paper has in 
many a gallant fight sounded bugle notes of 
courage and led the van to unselfish war. 
Judge not the whole by the sordid few, though 
the few be great and powerful. The press, 
take it all in all, thrusts its own keen blade 
through the heart of false philosophy, and, 
crashing through the barred doors of preju- 
dice and ignorance, calls slumbering truth to 
arms, while all around thought strikes on 
thought like steel on steel. 

The press has messages, too, that must 
out, whether men will hear or not. What 
true American pulse that does not thrill at 
the name of Lovejoy, who dared, fifty years 
ago, to print the words "negro" and "lib- 
erty " on the same page? He knew the mis- 
sion of the press, and told it forth with voice 
that only the dastard bullets of a mob could 
silence. Lovejoy they could kill, but the 
truth they could not kill. The rifles whose 
fetid tyrant-breath stifled the press in Alton 
shot their fire, unawares, across the conti- 
nent, and relighted the dear old torch of free- 
dom — the torch that Wendell Phillips caught 
up that very day in Faneuil Hall and laid not 
down until a thousand more had been kin- 



296 STEPS INTO JOURNALISM. 

died — no, not until the stain upon our coun- 
try's scutcheon was burnt and purged away. 
O mighty press — hand that can run the 
gamut of the soul — shall the world have 
empty noise or seraph music"? O strong Jove 
of the nineteenth century, shall thy lightning 
scorch the precious grain, or shall it blast the 
rank tares? There is work to do. Shall vice 
and greed stalk over the land, devouring 
souls, and none to say them nay? Ah! the 
responsibilities of the pen have become 
greater than those of the throttle-valve on 
the flying train or the helm on the swift ship. 
The engineer or the sea-pilot holds in his 
hands hundreds of lives. Bat the writer 
holds the life-welfare of a hundred train- 
loads — a mighty fleet — of 'doubting, groping, 
aspiring souls. Even when he is in his grave 
his words are speeding on. He can carry on- 
ward to success or hurry downward to ruin. 
Hundred-fold greater his responsibility, hun- 
dred-fold heavier the curse that will light on 
his head if he is driving his trust on to wreck. 
God grant that the helmsmen holding this 
fearful power on the ship of thought may 
turn its bow full and fair toward the great 
light — the beacon of eternal truth— in what- 
soever compass-point this may shine. 



INDEX BY TOPICS. 



Abbreviations, treatment, 36. 

Acquaintance, value of, 79. 

Advice, value of, 3 

Anecdotes, "good stuff,'' 14c. 

Anonymity the rule, 6, 84. 

Articles, on travel, 139; short ones 
preferred, 143; plan of, 22; sub- 
jects for, 129, 133 

Artists and writers, 144. 

Assignment-book, 43. 

Assignments, covering or falling 
down on, 4 •. 

Beginning a news story, 22. 
Book learning, 92, i->3. 
Book reviews, no, 114. 
Bulletin, telegraphic, 97, 100, 

Cable dispatches, 15. 

Capitals, small and large, 39. 

City editor, 20, 42. 

Collective nouns, 174. 

College education, 92, 183. 

Column, number ot words in, 12$, 
189. 

Composition, method of, 212. 

Condensation, imperative need 
of, 16 _ 

Cop3\ size of paper, 31- prepara- 
tion of, 31-33; how to mail, 35; 
to send by telegraph, 97, 100; 
slovenly manuscript, 177. 

Copy readers, 21, 107. 

Correspondence methods, 97; oc- 
casional, 136. 
" Correspondents, common error 
of, 29; starting as, 96; instruc- 
tions to, 98. 

Counting room, organization of, 
18. 

Date lines, 103. 

Department editors, no. 

Dialect stories, 201. 

Division of words, 39. 

Don'ts for newspaper men, 186, 

191. 
Dramatic critic, no. 



Editor, city, 20, 42; chief, 19, in 
department, no; exchange, 109; 
managing, 19, nf,; night, 20; 
telegraph, 108. 

Editor, no need to call on, 128, 
144. 

Editors, salaries of, 9c. 

Editor-in chief, functions, 19, in. 

Editorial faculty, 141. 

Editorial "we," 212. 

Editorial room methods, 106-123. 

Editorial staff, organization, 19; 
methods, 107; relations of mem- 
bers, 116. 

Editorials, in. 

Editorializing in news columns, 
6 5- 

Education for newspaper writers, 
92. 

Errors of all sorts, 168-191; in 
stories, 232. 

Essays not "good stuff," 94, 139. 

Evolution of the newspaper, 10. 

Exchange reading, 09. 

Experience the only teacher, 3. 



Faking, poor policy, 46: allow- 
able in non-essentials, 120; ex- 
ample, 181; causes, 181. 

Falling down on an assignment, 
47- 

Fashions in stories, 203. 

Fiction writing, sometimes pays, 
196; study of people, 199; hours 
of work, 202; newspaper train- 
ing for, 200; useof color in, 200; 
as an art, 205; James Lane Al- 
len on, 197; Robert Louis Stev- 
enson on, 205; Walter Besant's 
rules, 206; movement neces- 
sary in, 210. 

Financial editor, no. 

Folding of copy, 39. 

Folio numbers, 35. 



Getting a start, 
Grammar, error 



-105. 



228 



INDEX BY TOPICS. 



Headlines, how to write, 26; writ- 
ten by copy readers, 107. 
Hours of work for writers, 202. 
Human interest paramount, 207. 

Ideas, association of, 76. 
Illegibility, 33. 
Illustrations, 194. 
Infinitive, error in use of, 176. 
Influence of the press, 8. 
Ink versus pencil, 33. 
Instructions to reporters, i85. 
Interest in humanity, 207. 
Interview, how to write, 70, 74. 
Interviewing, origin, 68; meth- 
ods, 71; difficulties, 72. 
Italics, 39. 

Journalism, an art and a science, 
2; niercenar}' phase of, 13, 17; 
schools of, 3, 86. 

Juvenile stories, 146. 

Letters to the editor, 35, 137. 

Libel suits, 44. 

Lightning press, 13. 

Literary editor, training re- 
quired, 114. 

Local news, how gathered, 43; 
how to send by wire, 97. 

Local room, methods of, 49; 
women in, 151. 

Magazine work, difficulty of, ?g, 
131, 192; prices for, 193, 

Make-even mark, 38, 

Managing editor, 19, 116. 

Manuscript, how to prepare, 31; 
why rejected, 138, 20?. 

Margins on copy, 34, 135. 

Materials, most in demand, 124, 
139; where to find, 57, 214. 

Memory, value of, 74; how to re- 
member names, 80. 

Metaphors, mixed, 178. 

Misstatements, 179. 

Mission ol the press, 218. 

Mistakes of correspondents, 29. 

Moral standard for newspapers, 
223. 

Names, must be legible, 33; how 
to remember, 80. 

News, what constitutes, 98; old 
and new ways of sending, 13. 

News letter, 15, 136. 

Newspapers, circulation, 10; in- 
flueuce of, 8; evolution since 
late war, 10; present number, 
10; bettei than magazines for 
beginners, i> 



News gathering, methods, 43, 50. 

76. 
News sense, *2, 141. 
Night editor, 20. 
Notebook, use of, 75. 
Novel of today, 197. 
Novel writing, training for, 199, 

205; methods of, 2 2. 
Novelist, qualifications for, 199, 

205. 

Obituary notices in advance, 118. 
Organization of newspaper office, 

18-21. 

Paper for copy, 31. 

Paragraphing, 36. 

Parentheses, 41. 

Pen names, 135. 

Pencil, use of, 32. 

Pertecting press, 14. 

Period, copy reader's, 36. 

Photographs for cuts, 194. 

Plan of article, 22-41. 

Press, influence of, 8; evolution 

of, 10; compared with pulpit, 

10; mission of, 218. 
Prejudices, respect for, 141, 142. 
Printing press, evolution of, 10- 

21; hand press, 11; cylinder, 12; 

Hoe, 13; perfecting, 14. 
Pronouns, wrong use of, 175. 
Proof-reader, errors of, 184; how 

to become a, 185. 
Political news, importance of, 

139- 

Publisher, 16. 

Punctuation, errors in, 170; use 
of marks, 172. 

Queries, telegraphic, 100. 
Quotation marks, 40, 173. 

Readers, taste of, 139, 141. 

Realism and idealism, 207. 

Reformers as sub- editors, 18. 

Religious prejudice, 132, 142. 

Reporters, 2,; characterization 
of, 44; a day with the. 42-67; 
hours of work, 50; moral dan- 
gers of. 45; their cheek excus- 
able, 4 V ; average salaries of, 6, 
91; qualifications. 58, 61; in- 
structions to, 186. 

Reporting, no fame in, 6, 84; a 
useful apprenticeship. 7; meth- 
ods, examples, so-56j what it 
teaches, 59; a profession in it- 
self, 61; shorthand in, So. 

Revolutions, in printing, 12-16, 
192: in journalistic methods, 13. 

Run-in mark, use ol, 38. 



INDEX BY TOPICS. 



229 



Salaries of newspaper men, 91. 

School teachers in journalism, 
158. 

Schools of journalism, 3, 86. 

Scoop, defined, 42; dread of, 47. 

Shall and will, 176. 

Shorthand, 80. 

Small caps, how to indicate, 39. 

Space writing, defined, 103; rates 
paid for, 126; getting a start in, 
♦ 127. 

Space between lines, 34, 189. 

Specials, three kinds, 124; neces- 
sary elements, 124; on space 
rates, 126; writing at home, 126, 
how to go at the work. 127; 
choosing subjects, 129, 133; no- 
ted writers of, 135; women as 
special writers, 154. 

Spelling, errors in, 169. 

Sporting editor, no. 

Start, getting a, 86-105, 157. 

Stereotyping process, 14. 

Stet, use of word, 38. 

Stick, number of words in, 60. 

Stories, short, rage for, 196; should 
be localized, 176; character de- 
lineation, 199; plot, how to ar- 
range, 199; genesis of, 203. 

Story, technical meaning of 
word, 7. 

String, defined, 103. 

Style, and office rules, 41; ac- 
quirement of as a writer, 205, 
206. 

Sub-heads, 27. 



Subjects, no lack of, 5; for special 
articles, 129, 133; those with 
most interest, 124, 134 

Telegraph, advent of, 15; vast 
extent, 17. 

Telegraph editor, 1 8. 

Telegraphic stories, how to send, 
97, 100; bulletins or queries, 97, 
100; how to begin and end, 103. 

"The," avoid beginning with, 

Time, value of, 30. 
Tips, how obtained, 43. 
Travel, articles on, 139. 
Tricks of the profession, 119. 
Typesetting machines, 14. 
Typewriter growing in favor, 33, 
82. 

Underscoring in manuscript, 39. 

Woman's department, 148. 

Woman journalists, qualifica- 
tions, 160; Stead's views on, 
163. 

Women, in city journalism, 145- 
167; as authors, 146; as report- 
ers, 147, 149; in local room, 151; 
how they may get a start, 127, 
^i J 56; noted as special writ- 
ers, 154; useless articles by, 166; 
sacrifices that do not pay, 155; 
as correspondents, 157; a femi- 
nine reporter's views on, 160. 

Words, short ones best, 41, 213; 
study of, 179, 181. 



3 



